25 Cool And Absolutely Extraordinary Elephant Facts

• published: 16 Sep 2014
• views: 2584

Scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, elephants are the world´s largest land animals. Traditionally, two species of these amazing giants are recognized, the African elephant and the Asian elephant. Because of numerous reasons such as poaching or habitat destruction, the world´s population of elephants has been drastically decreasing. African elephants are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, while the Asian elephant is classed as endangered. To raise awareness of these beautiful, intelligent and peaceful mammals, we made a list of 25 little known elephant facts. https://twitter.com/list25 https://www.facebook.com/list25 http://list25.com Check out the written list - http://list25.com/25-cool-and-absolutely-extraordinary-elephant-facts/ Here's a preview: Elephants love water. They like to swim, dive into the water and find great fun in fighting the waves. It also gives their joints a break with the buoyancy they get from the water. Elephant females can have babies until they are about 50 years old. They tend to have a new baby every 2 and half to 4 years. They usually have one baby, twins are very rare. Stories of African elephants getting drunk from the fermented marula fruit are not true. The animals don’t eat the fruit off the ground where it ferments, and even if they did, it would take about 1,400 pieces to get one elephant drunk. The main reason why elephants are massively killed by poachers is their tusks. Although scientific researches proved the ivory consists of dentine, a tissue that is similar to bone and has no special effects or qualities. Although the elephant trunk is really huge, weighing about 400 pounds, it is so dexterous it can pick up very tiny things including a single grain of rice. An Elephant’s skin is so sensitive that they can feel a fly landing on it. Newborn elephants can stand up shortly after the birth. They are born blind, weighing up to 260 pounds. From ancient times, elephants have been used as working animals for various tasks. Since bulls can be difficult and dangerous to work with, they have often been chained and sometimes even abused. Historically, elephants were also considered even formidable instruments of war. Disgusting way of exploitation of these naturally peaceful creatures. [...]