Asian Elephant

Names & Nicknames: Asian or Asiatic elephant

Size: Although they may be smaller than their African cousins, they’re still the second-largest land animals on earth. A newborn Asian elephant can weigh over 100kg; that's as heavy as 33 newborn human babies! In comparison, their mum will weigh around 2,700kg (900 human babies) and their dads around 4,000kg (1,333 human babies), though the heaviest Asian elephant ever recorded weighed an estimated 7,700kg (2,566 human babies!). That’s a lot of Nellie.

Smell: The smell of an Asian elephant depends very much on their age and sex. Males are the stinkier of the bunch (shock), but that doesn't necessarily mean they smell bad. Young male elephants produce a sweet, honey-like smell that signals they're not mature yet and helps them stay out of trouble. However, the tables turn when a male elephant goes through puberty, and he begins to pong, producing a strong odour that signals he is ready for sex and getting into trouble.

Communication: Asian elephants are very intelligent and social creatures that can form close relationships and live together in tight-knit herds. To build these bonds, Asian elephants communicate with sight, sound, touch, and smell - much like humans do - and even go a few steps further using infrasound (sound at very low frequencies we cannot hear), chemical signals, and even underground vibrations. Sound is huge for these nellies. Asian elephants have a range of frequencies for almost any situation; from sounds too low for humans to hear to subtly alert the herd or attract mates, to roars when an elephant is disturbed that can get as loud as a jet engine taking off! Another important form of communication for Asian elephants is touch. They use their sensitive trunks to touch other elephants, which is important in forming strong bonds. Awww, sweet.

Favourite Hangout: South and Southeast Asia in forests, grasslands, swamps, and shrublands. They look for a few key amenities when finding their ideal home. Think low-lying and flat turf so it's easy to move around in, with plenty of water sources, mineral deposits, plentiful food, and mud wallows. Basically an elephant spa.

Favourite Snack: Asian elephants are herbivores (certified veggie lovers) who mainly feed on grasses, but also roots, leaves, vines, bark, and fruit. Some of their favourite snacks include farmed crops like bananas and sugar cane. But that's not a natural staple in their diet. Helping themselves to snacks grown on land they roam often gets these giants into trouble.

Eating Habits: A big animal needs a BIG amount of food to keep them going. Asian elephants spend more than two-thirds of their day eating. Luckily for them, they have all the tools required to eat as much tasty vegetation as possible. Tusks allow them to chip off pieces of bark and twigs, their teeth are perfect for grinding up veggies, and most importantly, their impressive trunks, complete with over 100,000 muscle fibres, allow them to pick up, sweep, crush, hold and more to ensure they stay well fed!

Toilet Humour: For a big animal, their poop habit probably doesn’t leave much to the imagination. An Asian elephant produces about 100-150kg of poo a day in about 12-15 separate sessions. Because of this, it’s probably not wise to stand behind an elephant!

Love Language: Complicated and even infrasonic (sounds too low for humans to hear). Females that are ready to mate start producing sounds that can be heard up to 4km away. What they are ideally trying to attract is a sexy strong male elephant in musth. Musth is a sexual state that male elephants go into periodically; they secrete special mating juices from the glands, dribble urine, and get extra aggressive; what’s not to love?

If you see them: Asian elephants are highly intelligent, gentle, and social animals, however, it’s always best to give them some space. If you see one in the wild, you are in for a special sight, but make sure you are respectful and keep your distance; you're in their territory, after all! Because of how amazing elephants are, naturally, everyone wants to get up close, and many places allow you to touch, bathe and even ride with elephants. Unfortunately, these elephants are often taken from the wild, and their placid behaviour results from cruel training methods, so we urge you to do your research thoroughly before visiting any of these places!

Red Flags: Like us, elephants need enough space, enough drinking water, and enough food. So, the major issues arise when these things are taken away, usually through human actions! Droughts caused by climate change are taking away water sources, roads and cities are taking away their space, and their natural feeding grounds are getting cut down and turned into rubbish dumps that the elephants feed on, filling their stomachs with harmful plastic, or farms so that we grow crops. The worst thing is that when a herd of elephants goes to feed at a farm built on the land that these elephants may have been feeding on for generations, they are often chased away, kept out with electric fences, or worse, even killed!

Epic Journeys: Big animals need a big amount of space, and Asian elephants love to roam! The typical home range of a female is about 550-700 square kilometres, which is almost as big as Singapore. Imagine what that would be like for humans. But, unlike us, they need to roam these vast distances to find enough water and food, but their space is increasingly getting cut down, polluted, and turned into crop farms.

Glow-up: It can be a tough world out there, so elephant calves take their time before entering it. An Asian elephant pregnancy period is 18-22 months! The calves come out raring to go, weighing almost 100kg, and can walk within an hour of being born. They then spend about 10-15 years growing before they reach maturity, male elephants spend this time as sweet-smelling (see the smell section) teenagers, but after maturing they will start getting smelly, violent, and horny (tusky?), and so will leave the herd to live the bachelor lifestyle. The females, however, will stay in the same herd for their entire lives, and may even one day become the matriarch of that herd, where they can pass down their knowledge to the new generation of elephants.

Facts: Asian elephants love nothing more than a refreshing mud wallow or sand bath. However, this isn't just for fun! They need to do this to protect their skin because they can get sunburn, just like us.

Who are they in the friendship group: That friend on the beach who constantly needs to apply sunscreen, or mud in this case!

How threatened are they: Endangered