Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) The African forest elephant is the smallest species of elephants. It is native to West Africa and the Congo Basin. It is one of two species of African elephants, the other being the African bush elephant. [13] Its trunk has two finger-like processes and contains about 40–60,000 muscles. [14]
The African bush elephant (foreground), Earth's largest extant land animal, and the Masai ostrich (background), one of Earth's largest extant birds. In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The precise definition of the term varies widely, though a common threshold is ...
Common name Scientific name Range Comments Pictures North African elephant: Loxodonta africana pharaoensis: North Africa: Neolithic rock art indicates that the African bush elephant inhabited much of the Sahara desert and North Africa at the beginning of the Holocene, and Ancient authors wrote that it was present in the Atlas Mountains, the Red Sea coast, and Nubia until the first few ...
The extermination of megafauna left many niches vacant, which has been cited as an explanation for the vulnerability and fragility of many ecosystems to destruction in the later Holocene extinction. The comparative lack of megafauna in modern ecosystems has reduced high-order interactions among surviving species, reducing ecological complexity ...
As part of the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, 80% of megaherbivore species became extinct, with megaherbivores becoming entirely extinct in Europe, Australia and the Americas. Recent megaherbivores include elephants, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes. There are nine extant species of terrestrial megaherbivores living in Africa and Asia.
In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The most common thresholds to be a megafauna are weighing over 46 kilograms (100 lb) [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] (i.e., having a mass comparable to or larger than a human ) or weighing over a tonne , 1,000 kilograms (2,205 lb) [ 2 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ...
The latter, dubbed the sixth mass extinction in Earth history, is largely attributed to increased human population and activity, and may have started already during the preceding Pleistocene epoch with the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. The following list is incomplete by necessity, since the majority of extinctions are thought to be ...
An African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), is an example of charismatic megafauna. Charismatic megafauna are animal species that are large—in the category that they represent [1] —with symbolic value or widespread popular appeal, and are often used by environmental activists to gain public support for environmentalist goals. [2]