Fact 1. Elephants are the largest land animals on the planet.
Fact 2. The nearest relatives of elephants are mammoths, which, unfortunately, have already died out.
Fact 3. Elephants are not really afraid of mice – it’s a myth.
Fact 4. Elephants have an excellent memory. There are cases when these animals took revenge on their offenders many years later.
Fact 5. The heart of the elephant is huge, it can weigh 25-30 kg. In the ordinary rhythm, the heart of this animal shrinks once every two seconds, pumping blood throughout the body.
Fact 6. Such a huge animal needs a lot of food. Therefore, elephants living in the wild, devote to finding food about 20 hours a day.
Fact 7. Just like food, elephants require a lot of drinking. On the day an adult elephant can drink 100-200 liters of water and sometimes even more.
Fact 8. On average, elephants live about 50 years. The record for life expectancy is an elephant named Lin Wang. He lived for 86 years.
Fact 9. The elephant’s trunk can hold up to eight liters of water.
Fact 10. The average length of the elephant’s tusks has greatly decreased over the past few centuries. The reason was that elephants with large tusks were killed by poachers. By the way, the length of the tusk is a genetic attribute that is inherited.
Fact 11. Elephant herds are always headed by the most experienced females. The leader can be replaced only in the event of the death of the former main elephant. An interesting feature – in the herds live exclusively females, and males usually live separately.
Fact 12. An elephant’s female is capable of conceiving a cub for only a few days a year. Pregnancy in elephants lasts 22 months – longer than for any other animals living on Earth.
Fact 13. It will seem strange, but elephants have their funeral rites. When one of the members of a herd perishes, elephants usually bury it, digging a shallow hole and covering the body with branches and soil. After this “rite,” they still sit silently for a few days near the burial place, as if in mourning.
Fact 14. During life, elephants change their teeth 6-7 times, as they quickly stitch. It is interesting that very old females, who lost their last teeth, help to feed the herd. But the old males usually die of hunger, so they live outside the herd and can not feed themselves after losing all the teeth.
Fact 15. Elephants, like people, can be both right-handed and left-handed people. To understand this, you just need to see what tusk elephant prefers to work with. As you know, most elephants are right-handed.
