About the Sumatran Elephant
The Sumatran Elephant is also known as the Elephas maximus sumantranus. It is the subspecies of the Asian Elephant, which is one of the two other species of elephants in the world, other than the African Elephant.
Bite-Sized Facts!
Weight: ranges from 2.25 to 5.5 tons
Height: up to 2 – 3 metres from shoulder to toe
Diet: herbivorous creatures; consume roots, vegetation, fruit and bark
Fun fact: an adult elephant consumes as much as 150 kilograms of food, drink up to 200 litres of water and excrete around 50 kilograms of poop per day!
The Sumatran Elephant is the largest mammal to exist on the lands of Indonesia!
About Population Distribution
Sumatran Elephants mostly inhabit the lowland tropical forests of Sumatra, Indonesia.
They used to be widespread across the island’s 8 provinces in 44 populations and total population size was predicted to be around 2800 – 4800 elephants. (Blouch and Haryanto 1984; Blouch and Simbolon 1985)
However, by 2008, the elephants had already become extinct in 23 of the 44 ranges identified in Sumatra. Currently, their estimated population size is 2400 – 2800 wild elephants, in 25 fragmented populations across Sumatra.
