Elephants are a favorite among animal lovers across the globe. This must be why creators have brought us beloved characters like Dumbo, Hathi, and Dr. Seuss’ Horton. But elephants aren’t just amazing in the cartoon world!
Here are some facts about elephants that’ll guarantee them a spot in your top 5!
1. Elephants Spend up to 18 Hours a Day Eating
Read that again. 18 hours out of a 24 hour day. That’s right, elephants stand around eating for ¾ (75%) of the day.
At the end of the day, these large herbivores can eat up to 330 lbs of nature’s best health foods. This includes grass, roots, plants, bushes, twigs, and juicy fruit. That amount of food must be rough on their stomachs, which is why they need a lot of water. 25 to 50 gallons to be exact. You can probably guess the end result of this gigantic diet. Yep, up to 220 lbs of manure every day.
2. Elephants Can Hear Clouds
Elephants have exceptional hearing. In fact, their frequency range is between 5 and 16,000 Hz (16 kHz). Their low frequency hearing skills allow them to hear infrasounds, which are sounds with a frequency lower than 20 Hz. The human ear can only hear anything from 20 Hz and up.
It turns out that clouds produce these types of infrasounds, especially when a storm is brewing. This gives our large land mammal friends the ability to hear a storm coming from up to 150 miles away.
3. Elephants Mourn the Dead
Just like us humans, elephants are very empathetic, and they take the death of a fellow ellie very seriously. This is evident in their death or mourning ritual. When they encounter elephant bones or a fallen elephant in the wild, they stop for a moment of silence. They stand completely still, with their ears and tails drooped, for several minutes. Then, they roll the bones under their back feet.
Understandably so, elephant mothers have a hard time getting over the death of their infants. In some cases, they’ll carry the dead infant in their trunk for a few days and sometimes they won’t let go for weeks.
4. Elephants Use Sunscreen
Can you think of anything that looks more tough and rugged than an elephant’s skin? While their skins are normally more than an inch thick, they are more sensitive than you may think. So sensitive that they can actually get sunburned.
These intelligent beings have come up with a way to protect themselves from the sun’s rays. They use mud! It turns out that they don’t just play in the mud for fun. It’s to cover their skins in a layer of dirt for UV protection. Adult elephants (especially concerned mamas) are also in charge of layering the youngsters in dirt.
5. Elephants Can Hear with Their Feet
Apparently, cloud-hearing-ears weren’t good enough, so elephants were also equipped with the ability to listen with their feet.
These majestic land mammals are intelligent enough to communicate with other elephants that are miles away. They use the sensitive nerve endings in their gigantic feet to decode the infrasonic messages (vibrations and rumblings) sent to them through the ground.
What’s more, they use the same skill to pick up on seismic vibrations that signal an upcoming earthquake. Then, they proceed to warm other elephants, both close by and far away, by stomping on the ground. This is just one of the reasons why elephants are so important in nature.
6. Elephants Never Forget
Have you ever heard or used the saying that goes: an elephant never forgets? It turns out that they really have impeccable memories. In fact, elephants will remember watering holes that they’ve come across in the past. They even remember humans they’ve met, years and years ago.
This is because they have the largest brain of any other land mammal. Their brains are 4 times bigger than ours, weighing around 11 to 13 lbs. This could be what makes them one of the most intelligent animal species on earth.
7. Elephants Have a Dominant Tusk
Elephants are more like humans than we initially thought. To add to the similarities between us, elephants also prefer to use their left or right tusk. They use their tusks for many tasks, like digging holes, lifting objects and animals, gathering food, and even to show dominance. As elephants get older, their dominant tusk starts to show signs of wear and tear, and it’ll become noticeably smaller than the other.
8. Elephants Experience Many Emotions
In addition to the empathy that elephants show after death, they are capable of showing many emotions and feelings.
For one, they greet each other by hugging with their trunks and show a lot of love and affection towards others. They also react to another elephant’s distress with calls and soft touches. When a baby elephant is agitated or distressed, family members will rumble and make a big deal of it.
Unfortunately, elephants also experience negative emotions, like post-traumatic stress disorder. Elephants that have witnessed the poach-related murder of a family member show symptoms of PTSD for decades after the incident. Abused elephants will also keep showing symptoms for years after being put into a sanctuary.
9. Elephants are Pregnant for 22 months
Elephant mothers are pregnant for nearly two years. This is rough, considering they normally give birth every four years. But don’t worry, these land mammals only have 4-5 babies during their 70+ years on earth.
African elephants, one of the main species of elephants, are also able to induce labor themselves. They chew on the leaves of a Boraginaceae tree, which happens to be the same tree that Kenyan women use for their labor-inducing tea.
