elephant

elephant

Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae in the order Proboscidea. Three species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (L. cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the only surviving family of the order Proboscidea; other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mastodons, anancids and stegodontids; Elephantidae itself also contains several now extinct groups, such as the mammothsand straight-tusked elephants.

All elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk (also called a proboscis), used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water, and grasping objects. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. Elephants' large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. Their pillar-like legs can carry their great weight. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs.

Elephants are herbivorous and can be found in different habitats including savannahs, forests, deserts, and marshes. They prefer to stay near water. They are considered to be a keystone species due to their impact on their environments. Other animals tend to keep their distance from elephants while predators, such as lions, tigers, hyenas, and any wild dogs, usually target only young elephants (or "calves"). Elephants have a fission–fusion society in which multiple family groups come together to socialise. Females ("cows") tend to live in family groups, which can consist of one female with her calves or several related females with offspring. The groups are led by an individual known as the matriarch, often the oldest cow.

Males ("bulls") leave their family groups when they reach puberty and may live alone or with other males. Adult bulls mostly interact with family groups when looking for a mate and enter a state of increased testosterone and aggression known as musth, which helps them gain dominance and reproductive success. Calves are the centre of attention in their family groups and rely on their mothers for as long as three years. Elephants can live up to 70 years in the wild. They communicate by touch, sight, smell, and sound; elephants use infrasound, and seismic communication over long distances. Elephant intelligence has been compared with that of primates and cetaceans. They appear to have self-awareness and show empathy for dying or dead individuals of their kind.

African elephants are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) while the Asian elephant is classed as endangered. One of the biggest threats to elephant populations is the ivory trade, as the animals are poached for their ivory tusks. Other threats to wild elephants include habitat destruction and conflicts with local people. Elephants are used as working animals in Asia. In the past, they were used in war; today, they are often controversially put on display in zoos, or exploited for entertainment in circuses. Elephants are highly recognisable and have been featured in art, folklore, religion, literature, and popular culture.

Classification, species and subspecie

                                 Elephants belong to the family Elephantidae, the sole remaining family within the order Proboscidea which belongs to the superorder Afrotheria. Their closest extant relatives are the sirenians (dugongs and manatees) and the hyraxes, with which they share the clade Paenungulata within the superorder Afrotheria.^[7] Elephants and sirenians are further grouped in the clade Tethytheria.^[8] Three species of elephants are recognised; the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) and forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) of South and Southeast Asia.^[9] African elephants have larger ears, a concave back, more wrinkled skin, a sloping abdomen, and two finger-like extensions at the tip of the trunk. Asian elephants have smaller ears, a convex or level back, smoother skin, a horizontal abdomen that occasionally sags in the middle and one extension at the tip of the trunk. The looped ridges on the molars are narrower in the Asian elephant while those of the African are more diamond-shaped. The Asian elephant also has dorsal bumps on its head and some patches of depigmentation on its skin.^[10]

Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus first described the genus Elephas and an elephant from Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) under the binomialElephas maximus in 1758.^[11] In 1798, Georges Cuvier classified the Indian elephant under the binomial Elephas indicus.^[12] Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck described the Sumatran elephant in 1847 under the binomial Elephas sumatranus.^[13] English zoologist Frederick Nutter Chasen classified all three as subspecies of the Asian elephant in 1940.^[14] Asian elephants vary geographically in their colour and amount of depigmentation. The Sri Lankan elephant (Elephas maximus maximus) inhabits Sri Lanka, the Indian elephant (E. m. indicus) is native to mainland Asia (on the Indian subcontinent and Indochina), and the Sumatran elephant (E. m. sumatranus) is found in Sumatra.^[10] One disputed subspecies, the Borneo elephant, lives in northern Borneo and is smaller than all the other subspecies. It has larger ears, a longer tail, and straighter tusks than the typical elephant. Sri Lankan zoologist Paules Edward Pieris Deraniyagala described it in 1950 under the trinomial Elephas maximus borneensis, taking as his type an illustration in National Geographic.^[15] It was subsequently subsumed under either E. m. indicus or E. m. sumatranus. Results of a 2003 genetic analysis indicate its ancestors separated from the mainland population about 300,000 years ago.^[16] A 2008 study found that Borneo elephants are not indigenous to the island but were brought there before 1521 by the Sultan of Sulufrom Java, where elephants are now extinct.^[15]

The African elephant was first named by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1797 as Elephas africanus.^[17] The genus Loxodonta was named by Frédéric Cuvier in 1825.^[18] Cuvier spelled it Loxodonte, but in 1827 an anonymous author romanised the spelling to Loxodonta^[19]; the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature recognises this as the proper authority.^[9] In 1942, 18 subspecies of African elephant were recognised by Henry Fairfield Osborn,^[20] but further morphological data has reduced the number of classified subspecies, and by the 1990s, only two were recognised, the savannah or bush elephant (L. a. africana) and the forest elephant (L. a. cyclotis),^[21] the latter having been named in 1900 by German zoologist Paul Matschie.^[22] Forest elephants have smaller and more rounded ears and thinner and straighter tusks than bush elephants, and are limited in range to the forested areas of western and Central Africa.^[23] A 2000 study argued for the elevation of the two forms into separate species (L. africana and L. cyclotis respectively) based on differences in skull morphology.^[24] DNA studies published in 2001 and 2007 also suggested they were distinct species^[25][26] while studies in 2002 and 2005 concluded that they were the same species.^[27][28] Further studies (2010, 2011, 2015) have supported African savannah and forest elephants' status as separate species.^[29][30][31] The two species are believed to have diverged 6 million years ago^[32] and have been completely genetically isolated for the past 500,000 years.^[33] In 2017, DNA sequence analysis showed that L. cyclotis is more closely related to the extinct Palaeoloxodon antiquus, than it is to L. africana, possibly undermining the genus Loxodonta as a whole.^[34] Some evidence suggests that elephants of western Africa are a separate species,^[35] although this is disputed.^[28][30] The pygmy elephants of the Congo Basin, which have been suggested to be a separate species (Loxodonta pumilio) are probably forest elephants whose small size and/or early maturity are due to environmental conditions.^[36]

Features of the elephant

                                                      The elephant has a strong memory that has been aware of things and places for many years, and takes advantage of its memory to access water resources in times of drought

Which may extend for years in Africa.

A strong sense of smell that enables him to smell the wind to identify the sources of water as well as the enemies of its scarcity do not fear elephants even black.

Elephants like to swim in the mud and mud and dirt on the back, it protects them from the hot sun and prevents the emergence of annoying insects.

The female elephant is pregnant from 18 months to 22 months. The elephant is called "dagfil" in Arabic. It has a lot of affection for its child. The large female lead the herd out of all the young in case of danger, and the young are responsible for the whole herd even if they are not Their children. Elephants may have twins, and in this case they need the support of all members of the herd to care for the young.

Young Elephants are weak because they breed and function only a small part of their brain. At present, these elephants lack all the vital skills they need to survive, and without their mother they may not survive, but their mental retardation is not an obstacle. From the rest of the animal species that the brain is softer, and gives this elephant an enormous ability to learn, the elephants learn all the small knowledge of her mother and her family: the way of drinking and what to eat and eating, in addition to the method of bathing and dust.

The discovery of how to control Khartoum is the most difficult challenge for young elephants, and it takes two years to acquire the skill. In the world of elephants, learning social skills is as important as learning skills Survival The elephants' society is composed of a very complex structure. It is a hierarchical society based primarily on age. All small elephants occupy it gradually. They will have to learn social signs and practice community literature and show respect for elephants that are older than the mother. Because the mother is the main focus of the elephants and the family ties are established around them, they determine the family's destination daily and the time of sleep and the hour stop eating and what to do in times of danger, and may be infected by the elephant Sam early in the day, where the target hunters elephants that Bearing the largest canines, and since they are older are often the main mother or mothers of the most experienced elephants that reach the group is always targeted. [1]

It is rare for a female to have twins. This means small birth weight and an additional responsibility in caring for young people who are like young people in their desire to play and ignore the dangers. They spend their time playing around and learning about the surrounding creatures. It's so.

The male herds are less disciplined, cooperative and interconnected than female herds, and separate from the female herds, but communicate with them under subsonic communication, which is less complex than female herds.

The elephant spends three quarters of a day chewing the poor plants on their nutritional value, thus replacing food poverty by compensating the amount and elephants. Deforestation is eating 200 kg of plants a day, so the elephant replaces the crunching crunch six times a day for its consumption.

The elephant produces a huge amount of manure up to 136 kg, lived by the dung beetle

The elephants fear fire and high voices, so when the elephants attack the farms, Asian farmers rush to carry firebombs and hit plates.

When elephants feel close to death or exhaustion, they go to the places of the water, and die there and with the accumulation of bones becomes the so-called metaphor of the cemetery of the elephants. Elephants are very emotional in relation to the dead and appear tension and fear if they see the skull of another elephant, just like human.