The African elephant

The African elephant is the largest living land animal and weighs up to 5,400 kg. It inhabits the Savannah, brush, forest, river valleys, and semidesert regions of Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Besides its greater size, it differs from the Asian elephant in having larger ears and tusks, a sloping forehead, and two fingers at the tip of its trunk, compared to only one in the Asian species. As vegetarians, elephants require much food, sometimes consuming more than 225 kg of plant matter a day. Their trunk is employed to pull branches off trees, uproot grass, pluck fruit, and to place food in their mouths. The trunk is also used for smell, touch and in drinking, greeting or throwing dust for dust baths. In both sexes, the two incisor teeth of the upper jaw grow to form tusks, and it is for this ivory, used at one time in the manufacture of piano keys, billiard balls, and other objects, that hunters have slaughtered thousands of these magnificent Description The African elephant is the largest living terrestrial animal. Its thickset body rests on stocky legs and it has a concave back.[5] Its large ears enable heat loss.[6] Its upper lip and nose forms a trunk. The trunk acts as a fifth limb, a sound amplifier and an important method of touch. The African elephant's trunk ends in two opposing lips,[7] whereas the Asian elephant trunk ends in a single lip.[7] African elephants are bigger than Asian elephants. Males stand 3.24.0 m (1013 ft) tall at the shoulder and weigh 4,7006,048 kg (10,00013,330 lb), while females stand 2.22.6 m (7.2 8.5 ft) tall and weigh 2,1603,232 kg (4,8007,130 lb).[8] The largest individual recorded stood four metres to the shoulders and weighed ten tonnes.[5]