Diet, Digestion, Gas and Fertilizer
Elephants can be described as
eating machines or manure-making machines, depending on their activities at the
time.
Elephants are herbivores, not
ruminants. They do not chew, ruminate or burp like ruminants (e.g. cows, bison,
goats, deer). Instead, they produce methane gas: A LOT AND A LOT OF GAS. With
the right equipment, a car can travel 20 miles with the amount of methane an
elephant produces in a day.
Elephants can feed for up to 16
hours a day. In the wild, animals can consume up to 600 pounds of food per day,
but 250 to 300 pounds are more common. A typical adult elephant in a zoo can
eat 4 to 5 hay and 10 to 18 pounds (4.5 to 8 kg) of grain per day. This equates
to over 29,000 kg of hay and 2,700 kg of feed per animal per year.
A normal daily consumption of
water is 25-50 gallons or 100-200 liters per animal.
Elephants digest food with less
than 50% efficiency. A huge amount ingested with an inefficient digestive
system means large amounts of manure. Elephants defecate 12 to 15 times a day,
weighing 220 to 250 pounds per day. This adds up to over 85,000 pounds of
manure, over 40 tons per year per adult elephant.
Ear
In general, the size of the ears
is directly related to the amount of heat dissipated through them. Differences
in ear size between African and Asian elephants can be based on geographic
extent. African elephants generally live in a warmer, sunny climate than Asian
elephants and need larger ears to help regulate body temperature.
Ears help regulate body
temperature in both species, but they are more effective on African elephants
because of their larger ears. Fluttering the ears helps cool the elephant in
two ways. Besides fanning the ears and moving air through the rest of the
elephant's body, flapping its wings cools the blood circulating through the
veins in the ears. As cold blood circulates back through the elephant's body,
the animal's core temperature drops by several degrees.
The hotter it is, the faster the
elephant moves its ears. However, on windy days, it may be easier for elephants
to stand facing the wind, and they are sticking out their ears to take
advantage of the wind.
Elephants can also spray water on
their ears, which can cool down before the blood returns to the rest of the
body.
Large ears also pick up more
sound waves than small ones.
Big,
really, really big animals
An elephant's heart makes up
about 0.5% of an animal's total body weight, so if an elephant weighs 10,000
pounds, an elephant's heart would be expected to weigh 50 pounds. If an
elephant weighs 4500 kg, the elephant's heart weighs 27 kg.
An elephant's intestines can be
over 19 meters or 60 feet long.
At 5 inches (12.7 centimeters),
elephants have the longest eyelashes in the world.
The brain of an elephant is
larger than other land mammals, weighing between 8 and 12 pounds, while the
human brain averages 3 pounds. The growth and development of the elephant brain
is similar to that of the human brain. Both are born with a small corpus
callosum. Just like humans, as young elephants grow, their brains also undergo
significant growth and development. As the corpus callosum increases, so does
the young elephant's ability to learn. Brain size of elephants provides them a
rough measure of mental flexibility. Large mammal brains are associated with
superior intelligence and complex social behavior.
Skin
Elephant hides can weigh up to
2000 pounds or over 900 kilograms.
Elephant skin lacks moisture, so
it needs to be loose, especially around the joints, to give it the flexibility
it needs to move.
African elephants have more
wrinkles than Asian elephants. Wrinkles on elephant skin help keep the skin in
good condition by retaining moisture.
The pink or light brown areas of
some Asian elephant skin are due to a lack of pigmentation. This lack of
pigmentation can be influenced by heredity, nutrition, habitat and age. This
condition is not seen in African elephants.
The skin can be as thick as an
inch in areas such as the back and as thin as 1/10 of an inch around the ears
and mouth.
Teeth
In addition to tusks, which are
modified incisors, elephants have four molars and one molar in each jaw.
African elephants go through six molars during their lifetime. One later molar
can be 10 to 12 inches long and weigh over 8 pounds or 3.6 kg.
Elephant molars are wide and
flat, suitable for mane. The molar surface is different between Asian and
African elephants. The ridges of the chewing surface of Asian elephant molars
run parallel, whereas the ridges of the molar surface of African elephants are
diamond-shaped. This diamond shape led taxonomists to name the genus of African
elephants "Loxodonta", the Latin word for this diamond shape.
There are no real tooth holes. As
elephants build and use their molars, they pass their jaws from back to front
in the form of a conveyor belt. Although only four molars are used in an
elephant's mouth at a time, an elephant can pass through six molars in its
lifetime. The last set usually erupts when the animal is in its early 40s and
should last a lifetime
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