Southern African bush elephant L. Masai elephant or East African bush elephant L. African plains elephant or West African bush elephant L. North African bush elephant L. The African forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis resides in the forests of the Congo basin of Africa.
Though initially regarded to be the same species as the African bush elephant, genetic studies revealed significant differences between the two. Such studies also indicated that the two evolved separately some 2 to 7 million years ago. Thus they are classified as separate types of elephants. The African forest elephants are darker and smaller than their savanna counterparts. Their ears are also more rounded and smaller in size. The mandible is narrower, and the tusks are stronger and straighter than the savannah species.
Unlike the savannah species, the forest elephant has five toenails on the forefoot and four on the hindfoot. Since these elephants have a slower birth rate, they take a longer time to recover from poaching than the bush elephants. The only living species of the Elephas genus, the Asian elephant Elephas maximus , one of the two major types of elephants, is distributed across Asia from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia. In general, Asian elephants are larger than the African elephants.
One of the best places to see African forest elephants in the wild is Mayumba National Park in Gabon Gabon has the largest stable population. Not much is known about African pygmy elephants. They occur in the same swampy rain forests of Central Africa as the African forest elephants.
The few sightings that have been reported imply that they are a more aquatic or water-loving type of elephants. At least two pygmy elephants have been captured and taken to Bronx zoo in and respectively.
The bull, named Congo, grew to the height of 1. In the 20th century, scientists believed that the Pygmy elephant was a distinct species — Loxodonta pumilio. However, in , DNA samples were extracted from a few museum specimens labelled as Loxodonta pumilio and compared to the DNA samples from the African forest elephants, revealing that the two types of elephants belonged to the same species.
Researchers attributed the demure size of the pygmy elephants to climatic variation during the Quaternary period the last 2. While they are smaller than their African cousins, Asian elephants Elephas maximus , also known as Asiatic elephants, are the largest land mammals in Asia. They can be identified by the two bulges on their heads and their smaller rounded ears. Scientists recognize three subspecies of the Asian elephant: Sri Lankan, Indian, and Sumatran elephants.
The national animal of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan elephants Elephas maximus maximus are the largest up to 3. They used to roam widely across the entire island but over the last century, as more and more land is converted for agriculture, Sri Lankan elephants lost a large proportion of their habitat.
Today, around 7, wild elephants live in Sri Lanka. However, taking into account that the Sri Lankan landmass takes up only 65, square kilometres, the island is considered to have the highest density of wild Asian elephants in the world. Despite its name, the Indian elephant Elephas maximus indicus is not restricted to India.
The third subspecies of the Asian elephant is endemic to the island of Sumatra. In comparison to Sri Lankan and Indian subspecies, Sumatran elephants Elephas maximus sumatrensis have lighter skin colour, less depigmentation and shorter tusks. Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark. An adult elephant can consume up to pounds of food in a single day. These hungry animals do not sleep much, roaming great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies.
African elephants range throughout the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa and the rainforests of Central and West Africa. The small, nomadic herd of Mali elephants migrates in a circular route through the desert in search of water. An elephant can destroy an entire season of crops in a single night.
A number of conservation programs work with farmers to help them protect their crops and provide compensation when an elephant does raid them. Elephants are matriarchal , meaning they live in female-led groups. The matriarch is usually the biggest and oldest.
She presides over a multi-generational herd that includes other females, called cows, and their young. Adult males, called bulls, tend to roam on their own, sometimes forming smaller, more loosely associated all-male groups. Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment.
Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal— almost 22 months. Cows usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants already weigh some pounds and stand about three feet tall. Before the Europeans began colonizing Africa, there may have been as many as 26 million elephants. By the early 20th century, their numbers had dropped to 10 million. Hunting continued to increase.
By , their numbers were down to 1. Between and , hunting and poaching put the African elephant at risk of extinction, reducing its population by another half. In the years since, poaching has continued to threaten both species: Savanna elephants declined by 30 percent between and , while forest elephants declined by 64 percent from to as poaching worsened in Central and West Africa. In , the International Union for Conservation of Nature recognized them as separate species for the first time , listing savanna elephants as endangered and forest elephants as critically endangered.
As few as , remain today. Compounding the problem is how long it takes for elephants to reproduce. With reproduction rates hovering around 5 to 6 percent , there are simply not enough calves being born to make up for the losses from poaching. This partnership is driven by the Toyota Environmental Challenge , which aims to reduce the negative impacts associated with automobiles to zero, whilst simultaneously making positive impacts on society.
Relative percentages for threatened species cannot be provided for many taxonomic groups on The IUCN Red List because they have not been comprehensively assessed. For many of these groups, assessment efforts have focused on threatened species; therefore, the percentage of threatened species for these groups would be heavily biased.
For those groups that have been comprehensively assessed, the percentage of threatened species can be calculated, but the actual number of threatened species is often uncertain because it is not known whether Data Deficient DD species are actually threatened or not. Therefore, the percentages presented above provide the best estimate of extinction risk for those groups that have been comprehensively assessed excluding Extinct species , based on the assumption that Data Deficient species are equally threatened as data sufficient species.
Available evidence indicates that this is a best estimate. Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable: species threatened with global extinction. Near Threatened: species close to the threatened thresholds or that would be threatened without ongoing conservation measures. Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct or Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct in the Wild : these are not IUCN Red List Categories, but are tags developed to identify those Critically Endangered species that are in all probability already extinct but for which confirmation is required; for example, through more extensive surveys being carried out and failing to find any individuals.
Thu, 25 Mar
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