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Wildlife Species - Indian Elephant Indian or Asian elephant stay slightly smaller than their African relatives. On an average, the male Asian elephant (called a bull) weighs 7000-1000 pounds. The height of an Asian elephant may reach up to 10 ft.
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Indian Elephant
Scientific Name: Elephas Maximus
Estimated Population: As an estimate, there could be 26,000 elephants in India while their population in entire Asia may be around 50,000.
Habitat and Distribution: Asian elephants are found everywhere in Indian forests. Their major population is spread across four landscapes - Nilgiri Eastern Ghats landscape, the northern bank of Brahmaputra, Kaziranga and Karbi-Anglong landscape and areas of western Terai. They live in both tropical moist deciduous forests and tropical dry deciduous frosts. They cover a vast range of area for their habitation, water and food requirements.
Unique Characteristics: Asian elephants are the largest terrestrial animal that evolved nearly 60 million years ago. They can attain a height of 10 feet and a weight up to five tons. Their tusks can measure up to 6 ft (180 cm) long. The females are found with small tusks, called tushes. Males without tusks are known as "makhna". Indian elephants have smaller ears than their African relatives. Their ears are their major characteristic which easily differ them from their African counterparts. Elephants stay purely vegetarian and in a day, an adult can eat 200-300 kg of fodder and drink up to 100 litres of water. They travel in family groups that often assembled in feeding grounds.
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Indian elephants are usually found grey but they may also have light blotches over their body. They have only a few long stiff hairs present on their body as well as tip of the tail has tuft of hairs for batting away insects. When Indian elephants are compared with their African relatives than they have much smaller ears and four nails instead of three on each hind of foot .
As they are herbivore so that they feed on bamboo, mangoes, bananas, shrubs, tree foliage, wood, apples, wile rice and coconuts. Since their bodies only make use of half of the food they consume so that elephants must eat between 200 and 300 kg of food each day.
The elephants continually travel to new areas in search of food and water to maintain this huge rate of consumption. A group of Asian elephants can include 10 to 30 members. Also, their entire group is led by an elderly female.
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