African Elephant

(Loxodonta africana)

This page was created by Sheena Bossie. All comments and questions should be directed to me via email at shbossie@davidson.edu. This website was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Biology 323, Animal Behavior, at Davidson College in the Spring Semester 2004.

Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Subphylum: Vertebrata Class: Mammalia Order: Proboscidea Family: Elephantidae Genus: Loxodonta Species: Loxodonta Africana

Image courtesy of South African Tourism

General Information

African elephants are a uniquely beautiful species of animals. The intelligence of the giant mammals has facilitated the development of a system of complex social behaviors that has fascinated us for thousands of years. John Donne said, "Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant. The only harmless great thing; the giant of beasts." Each elephant has an individual personality. The intricate relationships among elephant families and their interactions with the environment have been studied extensively.

There are two races of African elephants but only the “African savannah elephant” has been well studied. “Forest elephants” (Luxodonta Africana cyclotis) have smaller more rounded ears, are less than eight feet tall, generally stand with a straight as opposed to ‘sway’ back, sometimes have body hair, with smaller, dense, downward pointing tusks. All of the information provided on this website will be in reference to the larger, more well known, African savannah elephant (Sykes, 1971).

Adult female African elephants, or cows, range in size from seven to nine feet tall and weigh an average of 7,000 pounds. Bulls, adult males, weigh about 12,000 pounds and have a shoulder height ranging between nine and thirteen feet tall. All of these sexually dimorphic animals have well developed tusks composed of ivory. The characteristic trunk is on average five feet long and can lift about 600 pounds. African elephants live an average of seventy years, far longer than most mammals (Sykes, 1971). The two most serious threats facing elephant populations are overexploitation for ivory, meat and skins and loss of a suitable habitat (Moss, 2001).