Elephants are considered to be the largest land-roaming mammals on Earth. A charismatic megafauna, they are generally well-liked and are especially featured in many children’s films as fun-loving and playful creatures. Read on to find out more about them.
Contrary to what we believe, the trunk of an elephant is not just solely its nose. Rather, it is a long extension of both its upper lips and nose. By holding the tips of their trunks above waters, elephants can actually just ‘walk’ on the riverbed to cross a river. A single elephant trunk also contains more than 40,000 muscles, which is 62 times more than the number of muscles in an entire human being (we only have 640 muscles in total).
According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are two main species that are said to be endangered – the African elephants and Asian elephants. Though both species are similar in physiology, they are actually biologically distinct.
Differences between an African and an Asian elephant.
You can tell those two species of elephants apart by their ears. An African elephant’s ears are shaped like a map of Africa and those of Asian elephants are smaller, like the shape of India. As their names also suggest, African elephants are mainly found in Africa across the Sahara Desert and are further divided to either savannah or forest elephants. At the same time, Asian elephants can be sub-divided into Sri Lankan, Indian and Sumatran elephants and they are primarily found in Asian countries.
