Gioca STEMAnimals

Animals · Savanna and grasslands

African elephant

Loxodonta africana

The giant walking across the savanna

An adult male walks across the open savanna, standing over ten feet tall at the shoulder.
An adult male walks across the open savanna, standing over ten feet tall at the shoulder.
  • Status: Endangered
  • Savannas, forests, woodlands, and wetlands of 37 African countries

Numbers

Weight
13000 lbaverage for males; females 6,600 lb, maximum estimated 23,000 lb
Length
20 ftfrom 16 to 25 ft
Height
10,5 ftaverage for males at shoulder; females 8.5 ft, maximum recorded 13 ft
Lifespan
72 yearsaverage 70-75 years, at least one case over 80
Record height
13 ftmale hunted in 1974 in Angola, weighing 11.5 tons
Trunk muscles
60000 %estimate between 40,000 and 60,000
Longest gestation
22 months20-22 months, the longest among all mammals

Ten fun facts

  1. the trunk, a fusion of the upper lip and nose, is estimated to contain between forty thousand and sixty thousand muscles.

  2. a male hunted in 1974 in Angola stood thirteen feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over eleven tons.

  3. tusks grow throughout life, weighing on average two hundred forty pounds in sixty year old males and thirty nine pounds in females.

  4. the longest tusk ever recorded for an African elephant measured eleven feet six inches and weighed two hundred fifty seven pounds.

  5. large ears up to six feet wide flap to create air currents and release excess body heat in the savanna warmth.

  6. the pregnancy of the African elephant lasts between twenty and twenty two months, making it the longest among all land mammals.

  7. during musth, a period of heightened excitement, adult males secrete fluid from temporal glands and actively search for receptive females.

  8. in one birth observed in Tsavo East, a newborn calf stood up on its feet just thirty minutes after being born.

  9. in Chobe National Park, lions sometimes hunt young elephants that are left alone, especially when smaller prey becomes scarce.

  10. between 2003 and 2015, over fourteen thousand six hundred elephants were illegally poached across twenty nine African countries.

The quiz answers

The first one is the question printed in your book: here is the answer. The other four are extra.

Question 1 of 5★ this one is in your book

How many muscles are estimated to be in the trunk?

Question 2 of 5

How long is the pregnancy of the African elephant?

Question 3 of 5

Who leads a herd of African elephants?

Question 4 of 5

What is the primary purpose of the large ears?

Question 5 of 5

When do tusks first erupt?

Try it yourself

Experiment 1

Use a measuring tape to mark ten feet six inches on a wall to see the shoulder height of an adult male. Compare that mark with a doorway.

Experiment 2

Mark twenty two months from today on a calendar to visualize the full pregnancy length of a female elephant, which is the longest of all mammals.

Experiment 3

Thirteen thousand pounds is the average male weight. Divide that by a full twenty pound backpack to calculate how many backpacks equal one adult male elephant.

Data from Wikidata (Q36557) and Wikipedia (African bush elephant).