30 Jan Elephant Facts
Did you know?
A newborn elephant weighs between 75-115 kilos and is only 100 cm tall at the shoulder.
When grown it can weigh from 3000-5000 kilos and end up to 2.5 meters tall at the shoulder – which may explain why an elephant cannot jump.
However an elephant can run in short bursts of up to 20 miles per hour.
For such a big beast it surprisingly only sleeps 4 hours per night.
Elephants have a huge heart weighing from 12-21 kilos, beating only at 35 beats per minute.
Amazing Appetites
Elephants have gargantuan appetites and two-thirds of their day is spent eating.
Every day an elephant eats about 250 kg of vegetation and drinks up to 83 liters of water.
In one year an Elephant drinks 15,500 gallons of water and can eat:
1,600 ears of corn
2,000 sweet potatoes
3,000 cabbages, apples, carrots
100,000 pounds of palm fronds
1,500 pounds of banana leaves
12,000 pounds of elephant grass
Eye Spy
An elephant has long eyelashes and lots of folds in their eyelids, which hamper their vision. They don’t turn their head much so their view of the world is quite narrow.
Elephants cannot see in color nor can they focus properly, which makes our painting elephants even more remarkable.
They do however see silhouettes and faded green blue hues.
Their eyesight isn’t a handicap though as 60% of their brain is dedicated to sense of smell.
Trunk Tactics
The elephant’s trunk is controlled by an astonishing 50,000 muscles – the most gargantuan and versatile limb in nature.
Originally a deep-sea beast they used their nasal appendages as snorkels!
Their trunks are the most powerful known natural siphon with bristles attached to every single nerve.>
Elephants use their trunks to hold hands with their friends and are highly tactile and social animals.
Their trunks are more versatile than the human hand!
The trunk never stays still and can extend, twist and turn in any direction.
It takes 2 years for an elephant’s trunk to become proficient in use.
When the trunk is held high an elephant is alert and interested.
Elephant’s tusks are actually their incisors or cutting teeth and each tooth is about the size of a football weighing in at about 4.5 kg each!
Creature Features
Elephant’s leg creases have their own unique identification – just like fingerprints identify humans.
An elephant also crosses its legs – just like humans do when relaxing.
An elephant’s brain is approximately 3 times the size of a human brain – their temporal lobes are large and well developed and they have remarkable memories.
Elephants communicate via low infrasound using 30 different infrasonic sounds to ‘talk’ with each other – these infrasounds are much too low for the human ear to distinguish.