40 Curiosities about Elephants

Did you know that August 12 is World Elephant Day? Here are 40 fun facts about elephants.

Not only is it huge, it’s one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. It’s one of the most interesting animals, and there are things about elephants that you might not know.

1. The elephant is the world’s largest land animal

2. Elephants cover their skin with mud and dust, just as we apply sunscreen.

3. Around 30,000 elephants die every year due to illegal hunting for the ivory of their tusks.

4. They sleep an average of 2 to 4 hours a day, they can even go a few days without sleeping. When they sleep, they usually do so standing up.

5. Elephants bury their dead. They show sorrow when a family member dies and even sometimes bury their dead or cover them with leaves. This is one of the most moving elephant facts.

6. They are able to differentiate the sex, ethnicity and age of people through the voice.

7. They can detect rain from about 250 kilometers away.

The elephant is the only animal that has 4 knees. However, it is also the only mammal that cannot jump.

Did you know that there are “pink” elephants? They are known as white elephants. Their skin is normally reddish-brown, turning pink when wet.

They spend 16 hours a day looking for and eating food.

They eat herbs, plants, tree bark, and fruit. Adult elephants consume 100 to 250 kilos of food per day.

It is estimated that an adult elephant needs to drink 225 liters of water a day.

On average, the brain of the adult elephant weighs about 5 kilos, and they have 3 times more neurons than human beings.

The pregnancy of the female elephant lasts 22 or even 24 months. This is the longest gestation period for mammals.

The trunk of elephants is an appendage called a proboscis, which is used to eat and absorb. Other animals with a proboscis are butterflies, weevils and weevils, frigáneas, worms, among others.

In fact, the trunk is a very long nose that is used to smell, breathe, drink and grab things.

They inflate their trunk to suck in more water faster than Japan's bullet train.

It is estimated that they can suck up 3 liters per second, at a speed of 150 meters per second, this is 50 times faster than a human sneeze.

They have about 100,000 different muscles in the tube.

With the trunk they can lift a weight of up to 270 kilos.

An elephant can store approximately 10 to 15 liters of water in its trunk.

They use their trunk to feed by sucking, something that has only just been discovered.

The trunk can grow up to 2 meters long and weigh about 140 kilos.

Small elephants suck on their trunks in the same way that human babies suck on their thumb to calm down.

At birth, elephants already weigh about 90 kilograms and are one meter tall.

The sound that these pachyderms produce is called barrito. And the verb is barritar.

Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror.

In their natural habitat they can live an average of 50 or 60 years.

There is a myth that elephants are afraid of mice. Zoologist Bernhard Grzimek pitted elephants against mice. The result? The elephants sniffed out the rodents and trampled on them.

African elephants are afraid of bees. In fact, many bees can kill a small elephant.

For their part, Asian elephants also flee from bees, although to a lesser extent. Perhaps because Asian bees are not as aggressive as African bees, according to the University of Oxford.

For that reason, elephants have an alarm sound to warn the herd of a bee attack.

In India a strange case was recorded of a group of six elephants who got drunk on rice beer. They did damage and in the end they died electrocuted.

Elephants prefer to run away even before meeting people.

They can smell and see danger and avoid it. For example, they can smell poachers and run away.

The elephant Manyula, who died in 2010, was an icon of El Salvador. The people mourned her departure, and it is one of the most emotional stories of elephants that exist.

Another elephant loved by many is Kaavan, the loneliest elephant in the world. After 8 years in precarious conditions, he was taken to Cambodia to meet other pachyderms. His story is one of the sweetest you can read.

There is a coffee, El Café Marfil Negro, which is produced with the beans that are extracted from the feces of the elephant.

The closest relative of the elephant shrew is not the shrew but the elephant.

In Heimaey, Iceland, there is a cliff with the face of an elephant.

What do you think?

These interesting elephant facts teach us that there are many things we didn't know about them and other fantastic animals.