How many facts about elephants did you know?

 

Even if you’re a zoology expert, this list might just surprise you. These are some animal facts you have never known before about elephants facts for kids:
Since 1990, more than 60 people have been killed and more than 130 others seriously injured by captive elephants.

1. In 1903 a female Asian elephant named Topsy was killed by electrocution. She had been smuggled into the United States while young and went through years of physical and mental abuse as a circus elephant before killing her trainer
2. In 1962, a male Indian elephant named Tusko was injected with 297 mg of LSD by researchers from the University of Oklahoma — more than 1,000 times the dose typical of human recreational use. He died one hour and forty minutes later.
3. An adult elephant needs to drink around 210 litres of water a day.
4. It’s true that elephants aren’t fans of tiny critters.
5. African elephants avoid eating a type of acacia tree that is home to ants because they don’t want the ants to get inside their trunks, which are full of sensitive nerve endings.
6. Elephants sleep standing up.
7. Elephants communicate within their herds or between herds many kilometers away by stamping their feet and making sounds too low for human ears to perceive.
8. The oldest known elephant in the world lived for 86 years (1917 – 2003). The average lifespan of an elephant is from 50 to 70 years. The largest known elephant was shot in Angola in 1956 and weighed about 24 000 pounds! It had a shoulder height of 3.96 metres!ground water.
9. They evolved large, thin ears to help regulate their body temperature and keep cool.
10. The elephant’s trunk is able to sense the size, shape, and temperature of an object.
11. An elephant uses its trunk to lift food and suck up water, then pour it into its mouth.
12. An elephant’s trunk can grow to be about 2 metres long and can weigh up to 140 kg.
13. Scientists believe that an elephant’s trunk is made up of 100,000 muscles.
14. Elephants can swim – they use their trunk to breathe like a snorkel in deep water.
15. The tusks of an elephant are modified incisors that grow throughout an elephant’s lifetime. An adult male’s tusks grow about 7 inches a year. Tusks are used to dig for salt, water and roots, to debark trees, to clear a path and occasionally in fights. Additionally, they are used for marking trees to establish an elephant’s territory.

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