The Asian Elephant

The elephant is Earth's largest land animal. African elephants are slightly bigger than Asian elephants. You can identify Asian elephants by their smaller, rounded ears. An African elephant's ears look like the continent of Africa. Asian elephants are highly endangered.

An elephant's trunk is a long nose that has many functions. They use it for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things - especially a potential meal. The trunk has about 100,000 different muscles. Elephants use their tusks – the teeth on the sides of their mouth – to dig for roots and water, strip bark from trees, and even to fight each other. Unfortunately, because ivory is so valuable to some humans, too many elephants have been hunted and killed for their tusks. This trade is now illegal, but it hasn’t been completely stopped yet.

Elephants eat roots, grass, fruit, and tree bark. An adult elephant eats up to 136 kg of food in a single day. Elephants do not sleep much, and they travel great distances to find the large quantities of food they need. Female elephants live in family herds with their young, but adult males tend to roam on their own. Asian elephants were domesticated thousands of years ago. We used them to move heavy objects, such as fallen trees, to carry humans around, and even in wars.