Elephants - Large Land Mammals

Elephants are large land animals of the order Proboscidea and the family Elephantidae. Three living species is still there. They are the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant (also known as the Indian Elephant). The Mammoths is other species that have become extinct since the last ice age, dwarf forms of which may have survived as late as 2,000 BC, being the best-known of these.

They were once classified along with other thick skinned animals in a now invalid order, Pachydermata. Elephants are the largest animals which still live in these lands on earth. Gestation period of the elephant is 22 months. It is the longest gestation period of any land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 120 kilograms (260 lb). They typically live for 50 to 70 years, but the oldest recorded elephant lived for 82 years. The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1956. This male weighed about 12,000 kilograms (26,000 lb), with a shoulder height of 4.2 meters (14 ft), a meter (yard) taller than the average male African elephant. The smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a prehistoric species that lived on the island of Crete during the Pleistocene era.