Indian Elephant: The Gentle Giant

Also known as pachyderms, which means "thick skin" these largest of the land-dwelling animals of Asia are well… very sensitive creatures!

Indian or Asian elephants as they are also called, are distinguished from their African counterparts primarily by their smaller pointed ears, which are networked with blood vessels to regulate temperature - by flapping the ears!

Other differences are: a more rounded back; a flat and tall forehead; a fourth toenail on each of their hind feet; shorter tusks which are really modified upper incisor teeth, with those in females being rudimentary; a single finger-like projection at the tip of its long trunk; a grey to brown skin with a small amount of stiff hair; and a tail with a tuft of hair at the tip - for batting away insects!

Elephants forage for food all day, using their long trunks to reach into trees for tearing off leaves and using their tusks for stripping bark.

They drink a lot of water at least once a day by noisily sucking up the water with their trunks and then pouring it into their mouths. Since they don’t have sweat glands, they bathe often to keep themselves cool. No wonder they are such excellent swimmers, sometimes even walking underwater, using their trunks as snorkels!

Asian elephants are very sociable and live in basic family units of one adult cow and her offspring. Daughters remain with their mothers, but sons leave at puberty, often joining bull groups or remaining solitary. These family units live together in herds of up to 40, headed by an elderly female or matriarch who is responsible for the herd’s safety.

Being more easily tamed than their larger African counterparts, they have been used as beasts of burden for centuries. When ill-treated by their mahouts, they have been seen crying in pain and misery.

In danger of extinction in the wild, due to human encroachment upon their natural habitat and poaching for ivory, they have been classified as ‘Endangered’ by the 2000 IUCN Red List at an estimated population of only 28,000 to 42,000 in the wild.

With an excellent memory and capacity to solve practical problems, they are known to have helped not only their own kind but even rescued humans caught in natural disasters like floods especially.

According to a report in The Economist of November 2nd, 2006, when researchers put a jumbo-sized mirror before three Indian elephants, they tried to look behind the glass! Then, all three appeared to inspect their mouths, and took to moving their food so they could watch themselves eating. One of the elephants even used her reflection to repeatedly touch a mark on her head with her trunk.

That’s no mumbo-jumbo!

Copyright © 2006 Noël Gama