By: Audrey Davis

African Elephants

Characteristics Of African Elephants

The weight of an African elephant is 4,000-7,000 pounds. African elephants have big ears that reach over their necks. They have long noses called trunks. They also have two big teeth called tusks. They also have a medium sized tails. The African elephant is huge.

Advantages Of African Elephants

An African elephant has a long nose called a trunk. The trunk is used for smelling, grasping, touching, and spraying itself to get clean or keep cool. They also have big ears so African elephants can fan itself. That is the other way it keeps cool. African elephants can also hear very well.

The Environment Of An African Elephant

African elephants live in the hot plains of Africa. They use their trunks to cool off. First, they squirt a trunkful of cool water over their bodies. Then they often follow that with a sprinkling of dust to create a protective layer of dirt on their skin. It acts like elephant sunscreen. They also use their trunk as a snorkel.

Adaptations Of African Elephants

African elephants have two long teeth called tusks. African elephants can use their tusks to dig up dirt when the watering hole dries up. Under the dirt African elephants usually find water.

Mankind has caused changes to African Elephants

Mankind has caused bad changes for elephants. People are killing elephants for their ivory. Mankind has also caused good changes. People are making reserves for elephants so they can’t get killed. People are also not letting elephants that live in the zoos back into the wild. That way African elephants can’t get killed as much.

Fun Facts About African Elephants

An elephant’s closest living relative is a hyrax. The extinct wooly mammoth had lots of hair. If you look at an elephant today the elephant will only have hairs here in there. Elephants have four morals. Each moral weighs about eleven pounds. Each moral measures about twelve inches long.