The baby Elephant, National Zoological Park, Delhi
The African elephant is the largest living land animal and weighs up to 5,400 kg. It inhabits the
Savannah, brush, forest, river valleys, and semi-desert regions of Africa south of the Sahara
Desert. Besides its greater size, it differs from the Asian elephant in having larger ears and
tusks, a sloping forehead, and two “fingers” at the tip of its trunk, compared to only one in the
Asian species.
As vegetarians, elephants require much food, sometimes consuming more than 225 kg of plant matter a
day. Their trunk is employed to pull branches off trees, uproot grass, pluck fruit, and to place
food in their mouths. The trunk is also used for smell, touch and in drinking, greeting or throwing
dust for dust baths. In both sexes, the two incisor teeth of the upper jaw grow to form tusks, and
it is for this ivory, used at one time in the manufacture of piano keys, billiard balls, and other
objects, that hunters have slaughtered thousands of these magnificent animals.
Info from here...
