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Objective

To re-create the model of elephant in CG and composite it into photo realistic

video to the full effect. This dissertation aims to study the elephant in all ways

possible. To narrow down and be specific on dissertation we have chosen the

Asian elephant a genus of the elephant species.

Sandeep U (Modeler, Texturing Artist)

Vasishta Ram Y (Animator, Rigger)

Amitha B (VFX Artist)

Madhuri M (VFX/Motion Graphics Artist)

Team

“Because she said, when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.”

-Neil Gaiman, Coraline

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Contents

1.Etymology & Taxonomy

Origin of the word

In different Languages

Scientific Classification Names

Taxonomy

2.Physical Characteristics

Trunks

Tusks

Teeth

Skin

Legs and feet

Ears

Tail

Fur

3.Social Behavior & Evolution

Mythology

Animals Emotion

Evolution

Social behaviour

Mating

Reproduction & Development

Elephant Cognition (Intelligence)

Senses

Self-Awareness

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Communication - Merged with Self Awareness and Senses hence removed.

Diet\ Food

Sleep

Effects and Balance in Nature

Elephant Calves

Diseases

Geographical distribution

Migration

Products of elephant skin,trunk

4.Threats to Elephants

Loss of habitat

Products of Elephant

5.Characteristics

How it walks

How it runs

6.Anatomy

Skeletal system

Sense organs

Eye, Mouth & ear functions

Body organs

Muscular system

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7.Pre-Production

Story Board

Model Sheets.

8.Modeling

Screen Shots

Explanations related.

9.Rigging ,Skinning & Animation

Screen Shots

Explanations related.

10.VFX

Screen Shots

Explanations related.

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Etymology

Origin of the word

The word “elephant” has both Greek and Latin origins. The roots of the word “elephant” in

Latin is divided into two words ,”Ele” means arch and “phant” means huge. Scientific genus

name of Elephant is “Elephas”. In Greek linguistics, elephants represents an antlered beast

or stag.

Scientific Classification Names

“Proboscidea” is a Greek word that means “having a nose”. Over 350 Proboscidea have

been identified as having existed over the last 50 million years.

Domain : Eukarya

Kingdom : Animalia

Phylum : Chordata

Class : Mammalia

Order : Proboscidea

Family : Elephantidae

Genera : Loxodonta, Elephas

The modern-day African and Asian elephants belong to the order Proboscidea. Today,

there are only two final survivors to this order, Elephasmaximus(Asian elephant) and

Loxodonta africana(African elephant).

In different Languages

elefante in Italy, Elefant in German, Ελέφαντας in Greek, Olifant in Dutch, слон in Russia

Enugu(spelt ye-nu-gu) in Telugu, Hathi in Hindi.

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The African elephant genus contains two living species; whereas the Asian elephant spe-cies is the only surviving member of the Asian elephant genus, but can be divided into four subspecies. The African and the Asian elephants diverged from a common ancestor some 7.6 million years ago.

Taxonomy

African elephants (also known as savanna elephants) are the species of elephants in the genus Loxodonta (Greek for ‘oblique-sided tooth’), one of the two existing genera in Elephantidae. Although it is commonly believed that the genus was named by Georges Cuvier in 1825, Cuvier spelled it Loxodonte. An anonymous author romanized the spell-ing to Loxodonta and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) recog-nizes this as the proper authority. Fossil members of Loxodonta have only been found in Africa, where they developed in the middle Pliocene.

African Elephant

Indian Elephant

The Asian or Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus) is the only living species of the genus Elephas and is distributed in Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east. Three subspecies are recognized — Elephas maximus maximus from Sri Lanka, the In-dian elephant or E. m. indicus from mainland Asia, and E. m. sumatranus from the island of Sumatra. Asian elephants are the largest living land animals in Asia.

Since 1986, Elephas maximus has been listed as endangered by IUCN as the popula-tion has declined by at least 50% over the last three generations, estimated to be 60–75 years. The species is pre-eminently threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmen-tation. In 2003, the wild population was estimated at between 41,410 and 52,345 indi-viduals.

Asian elephants are rather long-lived, with a maximum recorded life span of 86 years.

Contrary to popular belief, the Asian elephant has never been domesticated, in the sense that it has never been bred over multiple generations with selected traits specifically to serve human needs. This term is often conflated with taming or training, a process by which a wild-caught animal may be induced to accept human commands. Trained cap-tive elephants have nevertheless been used in forestry in South and Southeast Asia for centuries and also for ceremonial purposes. Historical sources indicate that they were used during harvest seasons primarily for milling. Wild elephants attract tourist money to the areas where they can most readily be seen, but damage crops, and may enter vil-lages to raid gardens. Here we study the Indian Elephant in almost detail as our proximity to the Indian Elephant is much closer.

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Physical Characteristics

Trunk

The nose or trunk is the smelling organ of the elephants, and is associated with the special sensory organ called the vomeronasal organ located on the palate of the mouth. The vomeronasal organ structure consists of two small pits connected by numerous nerve endings which transmit smelling sensation to the brain. The vomeronasal organ is a highly sensitive organ for smell. When elephants want to detect an odor, they raising and wave their trunk in the air to better inhale the smell. They can find and locate water sources about 50 kilometers away, and can detect the reproductive status of the other elephants from a long distance, especially males detecting female elephants in estrous.Baron Cuvier, a great French naturalist, estimated that the trunk contained 40,000 muscles!! Amazingly, the entire human body only has 639 muscles. However, it is important to know that the elephants trunk actually only has 6 major muscle groups (not commonly known), which are subdivided into over 100,000 muscle units. An elephant calf can lift about 4.5% of its own weight with its trunk. Or, in the case of an elephant bull it ranges around 270kg.

The elephant trunk is an interesting organ.It is composed of muscles, vessels, nerves, fat and other con-nective tissues, and skin. The trunk evolved from fused muscles of nose, upper lip and cheeks. It contains no bone or cartilage, although cartilage is found around the nostrils and at the base of the trunk. The muscles are include superficial and internal muscles. The total number of a muscles is approximately 150,000.. Superficial muscles run longitudinally along the dorsal, ventral and lateral aspects of the trunk. The internal muscles are deep to the superficial mucles and include radial muscles and transverse mus-cles. The two nostrils are separated by a membranous septum and are connected to openings in the frontal aspect of the cranium. The functions of the trunk include feeding, watering, dusting, smelling, touching, communicating (touch and sound promoter), defense and others. The trunk of an adult Asian elephant can hold about 10 liters of water.

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Tusks

a)The tusks are actually upper incisors, not canines. They are the only incisors the elephant has... b)Tusks are used for digging, ripping of bark, foraging, resting a heavy trunk, and as weapons c)Tusks are fundamentally no different than ordinary teeth d)Both sexes of the African elephant have tusks, but only the male sex of Asian elephants have tusks that protrude beyond the lips. e)One of the elephant’s tusks is often used more than the other

Teeth

An elephants teeth are very unique in the manner in which they proceed from the back of each half jaw towards the front. The teeth follow a linear progression. As the front teeth continuously become more worn down they are slowly replaced with new teeth that give the elephant an ability to chew the coarse foods it eats particularly tree bark. The elephant has a total of 24teeth, but only 2 are usually in use at any one time.

When an elephant is born, a calf has four developing teeth in each side of its jaws. These consist of their smallish first and second teeth which are present after birth and the end of a third and a forth which is still below the gum. As each tooth wears out, it is pushed forward to the front of the mouth and it slowly wears into a shelf as the roots are absorbed. The shelf eventually will break off and the remaining piece will be pushed out of the mouth.

After the first two teeth are gone, parts of the two adjacent teeth are being worn down in each half of the jaw. This process continues until the 6th and sometimes 7th molar appears. The 6th molar weighs on average an incredible 4 kilograms and has a maximum grinding length of 21 centimetres (and a width of 7 centimetres). This 6th molar will be present for around half the elephants life. When the last molar tooth is worn down and the elephant can no longer chew properly, unfortunately it will usually starve or develop malnutrition and eventually die. This does not happen until the elephant is at least 60 - 70 years old. Below is a table showing the onset and loss of each tooth and age the above process usually occurs:

Molar Molar Appearance Molar Loss 1 At birth 2 years old 2 At birth 6 years old 3 1 year old 13 - 15 years old 4 6 years old 28 years old 5 18 years old 43 years old 6 30 years old 65 years old +

The molars of an elephant differ between the African and Asian species. Both have a series of ridges (laminae) which run across the tooth. However, in the Asian elephant the ridges are parallel as op-posed to the diamond shaped ridges in the African elephant. Although the Asian elephant has graz-ing teeth, it is usually spends most of its time in forests as opposed to plains like the African elephant.

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In both species of elephant, the movement of the jaw during chewing is forwards and backwards, un-like cows who use sideways movements to chew their cud. Therefore, the ridges act as two rasps grating upon one another and is made more effective by the teeth being slightly curved along the lengths.

Skin

The natural colour of the skin is greyish black in both the African and the Asian elephant. To the observ-er of the elephant, the apparent colour of the skin is determined by the colour of the area’s soil. This is due to the elephant’s habit of throwing mud over its back.

The skin of elephant is not equally thick at all locations of the body. The thin skin is 1.8 millimeters, found in the ear, around the mouth and anus. The thicker skin is found on the head, back and buttock. This skin can be 2.5-3.5 centimeters or more thick. The skin is a highly sensitive organ with a rich nerve supply. Like other mammals, the skin is composed of two major layers (dermis and epidermis), which include glands and hair follicles. The color of skin is darker (brown or reddish) in African elephants and lighter in Asian elephants (gray). The Asian elephants have localized areas of depigmentation on their forehead, neck, ears and forelimbs. Normally the skin is covered with dust, soil or mud for prevent insect bites, ultraviolet radiation damage and moisture loss.

Feet

a)The elephant´s foot is formed in such a way that it is essentially walking on tiptoe, with a tough and fatty part of connective tissue for the sole b)This spongy “shock absorber” helps an elephant to move silently c) The sole of the foot is ridged and pitted; this contributes to the sure- footedness of the elephant for a large variety of terrain. d)An elephants five toes are buried inside the flesh of the foot. e)Not all toes have toenails. f )The circumference of the forefoot is approximately equal to half the shoulder height!

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Ears

Elephants can hear the sounds of 16-12,000 hertz where human cannot hear less than 20hz. These sounds are called Subsonic Sounds. So these sounds have less frequency and more Wave Length.The ear of the elephant is a second highly sensitive organ The elephant can hear at 12,000 Hertz in the upper limit, compared tobats (80,000 Hertz), dogs (40,000 Hertz) and humans (20,000 Hertz). On the other hand, elephants can hear and produce sound which has a long wave length, 14-16 Hertz, below the hearling range of the human ear (20 Hertz). Therefore elephant communication is not entirely au-dible to humans. They can communicate to other elephants at a great distance using these ultrasonic wavelengths.. The functions of the ear include acoustic detection, balance, thermoregulation and infor-mation transfer. The constriction and dilatation of blood vessels in the elephant ear are controlled by signals from nerves, which are sensitive to temperature. We can estimate an elephants age from the ear fold, which progresses in size with age.

Eyes The structure of elephant eye is similar for both species. The elephant does not have a lacrimal apparatus, but the hardarian gland can observed closeto the third eyelid. The gland secretion plays theimportant role of preventing drying of the eye. The third eyelid is well developed and strong to protect the globe of the eye . The ppupil and iris are circular shaped and colors of iris vary between greenish-brown and blue. The visual ability of elephants is limited because of the eye, ear and trunk locations and the limited mobility of the eye.

Tail

Although elephants are generally considered hairless animals, both African and Asian elephants are born with thick hair. The elephant fetus is covered with 'Lanugo', a mass of long, downy hair, however, most of this is shed before the elephant is actually born. The hair on an elephant calf sheds more as the elephant calf grows. The hair is not designed to provide warmth for the elephant, however, it does allow the el-ephant to sense the closeness of objects the hair touches.

The hair on an elephant is thickest on the tail and more visible on the head and back. The hair on the tail can reach a length of up to 100 centimetres.The hair that appears around the eyes and nose have a protection purpose. It helps to keep out particles and germs from invading the body through the ears and nose. An elephant also has small sensory hairs along its trunk.

Hair

Hair can found of a body of baby and young elephant, especially on the head and back. Adult elephants, have less hair than young elephants and African elephants have less hair than Asian elephants. Hairs con-centrate around eyes, mouth, chin, the ear opening and the end of the tail.

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Baby elephants (calves) have lots of small fine hairs that cover most of their body. In the photo on the left, you can see the fine hair on the calfs forehead and lower back. These hairs will last in the same density long after the ele-phants first birthday and then as the elephant grows the hair will gradually

become thinner and become less visible.

Hair color varies from brownish, to brown, black, gray or white. Nail and plantar pad The structure of elephant nails is similar to other mammals. Elephants stand on the plantar surface of their foot with the cushioned pad supporting the heavy weight. The nails grow about 1 centimeter per month. The plantar surface of the foot is covered with keratinized layer, called the keratinized sole, which is ap-proximately 4-12 millimeters thick and grows at a rate of 0.5-1 centimeters per month. Sweat gland The elephants lack of sweat glands over most of their body, and cannot use them for thermoregu-lation. Some sweat glands may be seen in coronet line of the toenail. The ears are used as the pri-mary means of thermoregulation dispersing heat through radiation and with the assist of flap-ping the ears to move air to increase the efficiency of the radiator. Temporal or musth gland An adapted sebaceous gland is located midway between eye and ear on the temple on both sides of the head. Its opening or orifice can be visualized with the unaided eye. The glands are covered with skin that is 2 or more cm thick.. The glands produce chemical substances important in elephant re-production. The secretion is oily and smells foul when secreted through the glands opening. El-ephants in musth areaggressive, especially males. Females in musth are normally not aggressive.

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Mythology has many rich examples of Elephants. Elephants are highly regarded in many cultures and have been worshipped, too. They are considered as a symbol of wealth and prosperity in many cultures.We have highlighted a few examples quite in detail to illustrate the elephant in many ways.

a) Airavata:

A white elephant ridden by Lord Indra. Indra is the King of the Devas in Hinduism. It’s also known as ‘Ardha-Matanga’, meaning “elephant of the clouds”; ‘Naga-malla’, meaning “the fighting elephant”; and ‘Arkasodara’, meaning “brother of the sun”. ‘Abharamu’ is the elephant wife of Airavata. Aira-vata has four tusks and seven trunks and is spotless white. It is known as Airavatam in Tamil.

b) Erawan:

It’s the Thai name of Airavata. It is depicted as a huge elephant with either three or sometimes thir-ty-three heads which are often shown with more than two tusks.   It is sometimes associated with the old Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang and the defunct Kingdom of Laos. They had used Erawan, more commonly known as “The three headed elephant”, as their Royal Flag.

Mythology

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c) Seeing The Elephant:

Was an expression used by 19th Century Americans to describe new and exciting adventures. Also, sometimes the expression is used to qualify a bad ending to an excit-ing new adventure.

d) Ganesha:

One of the Most Popular Depictions of elephant as a God in Hinduism. Ganesha is known by his many names: Pillaiyar, Vinayaka, Ganapati, Gajendra, Vignesha,etc. Ganesha is depicted with an Elephant head and a man’s body. Also, known as the remover of obstacles, Patron for Arts and Sciences and is often invoked before the start of an auspicious ceremony.

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a) Joy:

Elephants are one of the select few animals that have the capacity to be joyful and playful with one another, to grasp humour and appreciate it. As social creatures, elephants will fre-quently touch one another in affectionate, loving ways. Joy is most often displayed when they greet close friends or family members. Herds sometimes split and larger families are separated, depending on the matriarch’s decision. This can be due to excessive numbers or shortages of food or water. When these herds meet at watering holes or breeding spots, they joyfully greet one another. This welcoming reception includes turning around in cir-cles, holding their heads up, flapping their ears, trumpeting, screaming and even urinating and defecating. Elephants who have formed very close bonds with people are also likely to react in this way on seeing their companion after a separation.

Another major cause for celebration is the birth of a calf. During the birth, the aunts and matriarch gather around the mother in joyful support. Once the calf is born, the others help it to its mother’s teat to begin suckling. Celebrations begin and the cows begin to trumpet, rumble and even scream in joy and excitement.

Interestingly, elephants have even been known to amuse themselves by playing games. These can either be played in a group, or with just one player. The animal will use objects from its environment and toss, twist, or interact with it in some way. It is doubtful that we will ever have a full understanding of the capacity of the elephant brain. As we submit humbly to this fact, we continue to enjoy the surprises as we observe them unfolding.

Link to watch a elephant dance(slightly)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGherGOr-so

Elephants, the largest land animals on the planet, are among the most exuberantly expres-sive of creatures. Joy, anger, grief, compassion, love; the finest emotions reside within these hulking masses. Through years of research, scientists have found that elephants are capa-ble of complex thought and deep feeling. In fact, the emotional attachment elephant’s form toward family members may rival our own.

Animals Emotion

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b) Grieving:

One of the most moving displays of elephant emotion is the grieving process. Elephants remember and mourn loved ones, even many years after their death. When an elephant walks past a place that a loved one died he or she will stop and take a silent pause that can last several minutes. While standing over the remains, the elephant may touch the bones of the dead elephant (not the bones of any other species), smelling them, turning them over and caressing the bones with their trunk. Researchers don’t quite understand the reason for this behavior. They guess the elephants could be grieving, or they could they be reliv-ing memories. Or perhaps the elephant is trying to recognize the deceased. Whatever the reason, researchers suspect that the sheer interest in the dead elephant is evidence that elephants have a concept of death.

Researchers have described mother elephants that appeared to go through a period of despondency after the death of a calf, dragging behind the herd for days. They’ve also wit-nessed an elephant herd circling a dead companion disconsolately. After some time, and likely when they realized the elephant was dead, the family members broke off branches, tore grass clumps and dropped these on the carcass.

Games are initiated by trumpeting loudly, indicating to those in the herd that a new session has begun. Unlike humans and some other species, playing games is not confined to the youth; older matriarchs and bulls have been known to engage in some playful recreation. Elephants have even displayed a sense of humour in their games, often tricking and teas-ing their spectators. Elephants in captivity have been observed stealing from or playfully handling the onlookers.

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c) Evolution:

Most of our knowledge of these animals is based on the teeth, as these are not only dura-ble, but very characteristic in these particular animals. (Elephant have unique teeth, and are known as ‘lophodont’: their teeth are huge, made up of a stack of enamel ridges, and move forward in the mouth like a conveyor belt as others are worn away.) Information has also been derived from skulls, entire skeletons, and, occasionally, a complete body preserved in ice.The moerithenes were an evolutionary side-branch, were about 1 m tall, and were probably amphibious, eating aquatic plants. Small tusks were present in the lower jaw. Barytheres are also thought to be a side-branch: they had two pairs of tusks in both the upper and lower jaw, were lophodont (had the ridges on their teeth which form grinding surfaces), and had other similarities to modern-day elephants.

The deinotheres were undoubtedly proboscideans, and were a very successful group, as they lasted from about 24 million years ago to just 2 million years ago, and were wide-spread in Europe, Asia and Africa. They had lophodont teeth and large downwardly curved tusks in the lower jaws; the skulls found also indicate that it is likely that they had a trunk, although it may have been shorter than that of elephants. The name deinothere is based on the greek for ‘terrible beast’, as 19th century naturalists believed that it was a sea monster.

Paleomastodons lived about 40 million years ago in north Africa, and had many dental similarities with modern elephants. There were also other groups of ancient proboscideans that evolved and radiated out during the same time period, all with slightly different dental arrangements, including that of the tusks: a lot of these divergent forms have been labelled ‘gomphotheres’. These animals evolved in different directions: some had elongated lower jaws while others had shortened lower jaws: it is thought that they inhabited different habi-tats, and that some forms were specialised for living and eating in swampy regions.

One of the more well-known members of the short-jawed gomphotheres is the mastodon, Mammut americanum. The mastodon had very long, strongly curved upper tusks, many of which have been found carefully preserved, along with entire skeletons. Mastodons were prehistoric elephant-like mammals, but are not part of the same family as elephants and the mammoth, as they are an earlier off-shoot of the evolutionary tree. Another well-known gomphothere is Platybelodon, which had broad, flattened shovel-like tusks protruding from its lower jaw.

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Another off-shoot of the elephant evolutionary tree are the stegodontids, as they were also too highly specialised to be the ancestors of elephants. Many transitional forms have been discovered between early gomphothere species and elephants, which points to gamphotheres, and not stegodontids as was originally thought, as holding the key to elephant evolution.

Throughout the confusion of all these various forms and species, certain general trends in elephant evolution are apparent. There has been a general increase in size throughout, as well as a lengthening of the limb bones, the development of short, broad feet, an increase in skull size, elongation of the lower jaw, the development of the proboscis, or trunk, the reduction in the number of teeth (virtually every form has less and less teeth), and the ex-cess growth of the second incisors to form tusks. The teeth have also become increasingly specialised to better enable the chewing and grinding of plants.

When the family Elephantidae was established, there were only three elephant species known: the African elephant, the Indian elephant, and the mammoth. After further fossils were found, and as more detailed investigation of fossils is now possible due to modern technology, this family is now known to include six genera and 26 elephant species, of which the African elephant and the Indian elephant are the only living representatives: these two species are the end result of over 50 million years of evolution.

The African elephant is the largest living land mammal: some advantages of its great size are a lack of predators, as well as reduced heat loss. The African elephant is believed to have migrated throughout Africa, but remained on the continent, whereas the Indian el-ephant evolved in Africa and then later migrated to Eurasia.

The Indian elephant is actually more closely related to the now-extinct mammoth, genus Mammuthus, than it is to the African elephant. An interesting question is why the two elephant species are extant (ie: survived to the present day) while all the others become extinct. One reason is that they possessed both specialised and general characteristics, which enabled their lineages to adapt to an ever-changing environment, unlike the mam-moth which was too highly specialised.

One of the more commonly known mammoths, the woolly mammoth, survived until the end of the Ice Age, about 10 000 years ago, and was known to primitive man, as evi-denced by the many drawings on caves and walls in Europe. It is unknown what caused the extinction of mammoths, mastodons and others at the end of the Ice Age, but climatic

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changes are likely to have played a part, as well as competition from species with similar ecological niches, and hunting by man: they were a source of food, clothing and dwelling material, and many bones have been found with charring, embedded projectile objects, and butcher marks. In spite of this, it is likely that man’s influence was relatively small, and that the major cause of extinction was overspecialization.

Link to watch a Discovery Channels Video on elephant evolution:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utNxHs6ghSw

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d) Social Behavior:

The family group in both Asian and African elephants is one that is stable and a rich source of social interactions. A complex, fluid, fission–fusion society is known in the African savan-nah elephant (Loxodonta africana africana), the basic unit of which is the mother–offspring unit, two to three such units comprising a family group headed by a matriarch.

The matriarch is generally the oldest adult female in a family and often a repository of criti-cal ecological information, the matriarch’s experience influencing and guiding the move-ment patterns and habitat utilization by the family group. While the matriarch is generally dominant in competitive and cooperative situations, the degree of leadership exhibited by the matriarch may vary from one family to another.

On the other hand, in Ruhuna National Park (Yala) in southeastern Sri Lanka, no evidence for strong matriarchal leadership has been found, though this does not preclude the im-portance of the matriarch during periods of environmental or social stress. Much obviously remains to be learnt about the role of the matriarch as this has not been examined in other populations, and the effect of ecological conditions on the importance of matriarchal lead-ership and the dominance and reproductive fitness of matriarchs in comparison to other adult females may be topics to begin with.

Studies of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) have also confirmed the existence of basic units comprising mother and dependent offspring. Associations of two or more mother–offspring units have been variously described as ‘family groups’ in southeastern Sri Lanka and as ‘joint family groups’ in southern India. Higher levels of organization including, ‘bond groups’ and ‘clans’ have also been discerned in southern India. However, in the absence of any comprehensive behavioral study of Asian elephants, the social organization of this species remains poorly understood. The use of molecular tech-niques has begun to unravel pieces of the story, but a lot remains to be learnt. A study of mitochondrial DNA haplo types (which are maternally inherited) of Asian elephants in Sri Lanka showed that all the individuals of a social group had the same haplo type, indicative of shared maternal ancestry. More recently, in a study of genetic relatedness using nuclear microsatellite DNA, Vidya and Sukumar have shown that the adult females of ‘family groups’ in southern India are indeed closely related, probably as a combination of mother–daugh-ter, full sisters, and half sisters, indicating that the basic Asian elephant social group does represent a family group as in the African savannah elephant.

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No evidence for inter-group transfer of females has been found in the Asian elephant based on genetic analyses of family groups. However, a detailed behavioral and genetic study involving associations of family groups and the relatedness between them in the Asian elephant is much awaited in order to understand the additional hierarchical levels of social organization that may exist. It appears that Asian elephants in rain forests exhibit social organization that is limited to the family or bond group, somewhat similar to the situation in the African forest elephant.

The simpler social organization may simply be a result of the availability of forage, or due to different social requirements or as a response to threats, and additional studies spanning different habitats are required to understand the ecological determinants of social organi-zation.

Link to a pdf; in detail study about the Social behavior in elephants:http://www.andrews-elephants.com/docs/1200.pdf

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e) Mating:

Elephants are polygynous mammals and show a high degree of sexual dimorphism, with full-grown males being much larger than females. The age at sexual maturity varies be-tween 9 and 22 years (more typically 11–14 years) in females and at least 15 (in the Asian elephant) or 24 (in the African savannah elephant) years in males.

Musth Behaviour: Musth is a period of increased plasma testosterone levels, observed in adult male Asian and African elephants. It is analogous to the rutting period of several mammals but asynchronous across individuals. Although well described for Asian elephant in ancient elephant-lore and more recent studies, musth in the African elephant was dis-covered much later due to the confusing interpretation of temporal gland secretions from both sexes.

Musth is characterized by the enlargement of and copious secretions from the temporal gland, persistent dribbling urine, increase in aggression towards other elephants and non elephant objects, increased association with female herds, and increased sexual activity. The mean age of first musth was 29 years in Amboseli and the duration of musth was cor-related with age of the elephant. Higher ranking, older males came into musth more regu-larly and for several months at a time, particularly when most females were in oestrus, while lower ranking males came into musth more sporadically and for short periods

The following behaviors have been observed to be associated with musth:1) Ear wave during agonistic interactions between males and during musth rumbling. 2) Lifting the head and reaching up with the trunk to rub the temporal gland.3) Marking trees with the temporal gland area.4) Urinating with the penis inside the sheath.5) Musth walk, in which the head is held high, ears spread out stiff, and the head is swung from side to side in a controlled manner. 6) Head oscillation in younger males. 7) Tusking the ground, lifting up and hurling vegetation and mud and8) Musth rumbles.The musth rumble is a set of low frequency context-specific calls end-ing with an ear wave or ear fold, given during contests with other males, during marking behavior, in response to other low frequency sounds, and before copulation. Musth males rumble more often when they are alone than when with an oestrus female and the rumble appears to elicit a vocal response from females.

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During musth, adult males visit family groups seeking out receptive females1 and if the fe-male is receptive, may exhibit mate guarding for a period of 2–3 days. During musth, males advertise their physical and sexual state not only by giving off rumbles but also by a host of chemical signals carried in urine, temporal gland secretions, and even breath that attract the attention of and evoke responses from females and other males.

Several studies have been directed towards identifyingand characterizing the specific compounds involved in musth, chemical signaling during musth and the mechanism of reception, behavioural functionality, and relevance of the signals. Both Asian and African elephants in musth have significantly higher levels of testosterone and other androgens than males not in musth.

However, little attention has been paid to the subject of competition between females within elephant social groups, and these remain only hypotheses at present.

Read a pdf in Detail here:http://www.andrews-elephants.com/docs/1200.pdf

f ) Reproduction & Development:

A female will usually be ready to breed around the age of thirteen, when she comes into estrus, a short phase of receptiveness lasting a couple of days, for the first time. Females an-nounce their estrus with smell signals and special calls.

Females prefer bigger, stronger, and, most importantly, older males. Such a reproductive strategy tends to increase their offspring’s chances of survival.After a twenty-two-month pregnancy, the mother gives birth to a calf that weighs about 115 kg (250 lb) and stands over 75 cm (2.5 ft) tall. Elephants have a very long development.

As is common with more intelligent species, they are born with fewer survival instincts than many other animals. Instead, they rely on their elders to teach them what they need to know. Today, however, the pressures humans have put on the wild elephant populations, from poaching to habitat destruction, mean that the elderly often die at a younger age, leaving fewer teachers for the young. The consequences of this for the next generation are not known.

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A new calf is usually the center of attention for herd members. Adults and most of the other young will gather around the newborn, touching and caressing it with their trunks. The baby is born nearly blind and at first relies almost completely on its trunk to discover the world around it.

Elephants within a herd are usually related, and all members of the tightly-knit female group participate in the care and protection of the young. After the initial excitement, the mother will usually select several full-time baby-sitters, or “allomothers”, from her group. An elephant is considered an allomother when she is not able to have her own calf. The more allomothers, the better the calf’s chances of survival. A benefit of being an allomother is that she can gain experience or receive assistance when caring for her own calf. According to Cynthia Moss, a well known researcher, these allomothers will help in all aspects of rais-ing the calf.

They walk with the young as the herd travels, helping the calves along if they fall or get stuck in the mud. The more allomothers a calf has, the more free time its mother has to feed herself. Providing a calf with nutritious milk means the mother has to eat more nutritious food herself.

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g) Intelligence (Cognition):

With a mass just over 5 kg, elephant brains are larger than those of any other land animal. A wide variety of behaviors associated with intelligence have been attributed to elephants, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, allomothering, play, use of tools, compassion and self-awareness. Elephants are believed to rank equally in terms of intelligence with cetaceans and nonhuman primates. 

The elephant’s brain is similar to that of humans in terms of structure and complexity; the elephant brain exhibits a gyral pattern more complex and with more numerous convolutes, or brain folds, than that of humans, primates  or carnivores but less complex than cetaceans. However, the cortex of the elephant brain is “thicker than that of cetaceans” and is believed to have as many cortical nerve cells and cortical synapses as that of humans, which exceeds that of cetaceans.

The Lessons learnt include how to feed, use tools and understand their place in their social structure. Elephants’ capacity for memory and emotions is remarkable and is due to the well developed hippocampus. This is also the area responsible for emotional flashbacks and is the reason that elephants experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The insight and intelligence of the elephant is particularly note-worthy in their ability to mourn their dead. This behavior has only previously been noted in humans. In fact, recently deceased elephants will receive a burial ceremony, while those who are already reduced to a skeleton are still paid respect by passing herds. The burial ceremony is marked by deep rumblings while the dead body is touched and caressed by the herd members’ trunks.

Intelligence is also manifested in the elephant’s ability to self-medicate. When a pregnant mother is due to give birth, she will chew on the leaves of the tree from the Boraginaceae family to induce labor.

Another ability that indicates superior intellect is elephants’ ability to play and display a sense of humour. Games include throwing a stick at a certain object, passing an object from one animal to another, or squirting water out of the trunk in a fountain. Elephants in zoos have even been seen stealing onlookers’ caps and hiding them in playful teasing.

The ability to mimic sounds is another indication of the impressive intelligence of these beasts. Elephants have been recorded mimicking passing trucks and even the sounds made

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by their trainers. Often, the elephant manages to articulate certain sounds so that they bear a strong resemblance to the spoken word.

Elephants are able to use tools or implements to accomplish a task they cannot perform on their own. They have been observed digging holes for drinking water, then moulding bark from a tree into the shape of a ball and placing it on top of the hole and covering it over with sand to avoid evaporation. They also use sticks to scratch their backs when their trunk cannot reach and have been known to drop rocks on electric fences to damage them.

The elephant’s problem solving abilities are another impressive facet of their boundless intelligence. Incredibly, the elephant is able to change its behaviour based on a given situ-ation. Bandula, an Asian elephant in captivity, had learnt how to release the complex hook on her shackles and would then assist her fellow ‘inmates’ to escape from theirs.

These capabilities are merely touching the tip of the iceberg of what is the elephant’s ca-pacity for insight, thought and discernment. And it is this capacity that continues to capti-vate researchers and onlookers alike in their eternal quest to understand the mystery of the elephant psyche.

Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, in-cluding humans, in distress. In India, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout (elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to inves-tigate the hold-up and noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.Cynthia Moss has often seen elephants going out of their way to avoid hurting or killing a human, even when it was difficult for them (such as having to walk backwards to avoid a person).

Joyce Poole documented an encounter told to her by Colin Francombe on Kuki Gallman’s Laikipia Ranch. A ranch herder was out on his own with camels when he came across a fam-ily of elephants. The matriarch charged at him and knocked him over with her trunk, break-ing one of his legs. In the evening, when he did not return, a search party was sent in a truck to find him. When the party discovered him, he was being guarded by an elephant. The ani-mal charged the truck, so they shot over her and scared her away. The herdsman later told them that when he could not stand up, the elephant used her trunk to lift him under the shade of a tree. She guarded him for the day and would gently touch him with her trunk.

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Like several other species, elephants are able to produce abstract art using their trunks to hold brushes. An example of this was shown in the TV program Extraordinary Animals, in which elephants at a camp in Thailand were able to draw self-portraits with flowers. Al-though the images were drawn by the elephants, there was always a person assisting and guiding the movement. From those presentations, it cannot be definitely evaluated wheth-er the elephants are conscious about the shape of their drawings or not.

This extraordinary video documentation of an elephant painting a picture of an elephant—possibly indicating self-awareness—has become widespread on internet news and video websites. The quality of the painting is extremely high, leading many astonished viewers to doubt the video’s authenticity. The website snopes.com, which specializes in debunking urban legends, lists the video as “true”, in that the elephant produced the brush strokes, but notes that the similarity of the produced paintings is indicative of a learned sequence of strokes rather than a creative effort on the part of the elephant.

Link to the Elephant Painting:http://www.youtube.com/v/He7Ge7Sogrk

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h) Senses:

Hearing:The sound structure of elephants is very much advanced. Over the course of the past few decades, there have been many studies completed on the infrasound hearing capabilities of elephants. The leading authority on this topic in the world would be Katy Payne who recently published the book Silent Thunder.

Interestingly, in the book Elephants by Eltringham a passage on an elephant´s hearing is described in full in the following passage:“The elephant is usually considered to have an acute sense of hearing, although firm data on the matter are hard to find. The large pinnae are not necessarily indicative of good hear-ing because their primary functions lie in temperature control and in social signalling. El-ephants do not appear to communicate over long distances so perhaps there is little need for particularly good hearing, but it is difficult to be certain whether and elephant has not heard a distant sound or is simply ignoring it.” (P.22 Eltringham)

Luckily, it was discovered that this was totally wrong and that elephants do communicate over huge distances. Thanks to Katy Payne, the general public is no longer told about el-ephant coordination between group’s coined elephant ESP. Also, they are now spared the descriptions about elephants which mark their hearing as poor; her discovery of infrasonic communication has opened the door to numerous implications about the social world of elephants. It has opened the door allowing those who care to better understand the el-ephant. Joyce Poole has also worked in extending our understanding of the depth of this communication and its implications.

The infrasound level is a range of sound waves which humans are incapable of perceiving with their own ears. However with the help of certain devices, much can be learned about the elephant and their modes of communication.

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Vision:Elephant eyes are about 3.8 cm (1.5 in.) in diameter and their vision is moderate. Ele-phants traverse forests, savannas, and grasslands, primarily orienting with the trunk, as opposed to sight. Ex: There have been documented occurrences of elephant herds being led by a blind member. The complete lack of vision did not hinder the blind member’s ability to fulfill its leadership role.

Elephants have long eyelashes to help avert blowing sand, dirt, and debris from the eyes.In addition to the upper and lower eyelids, elephants have a “third eyelid” which moves vertically across the eye. These eyelids function to protect the eye when feeding, bathing, and dusting (cooling down). Refer to behavior section.

Some elephants develop a white ring that encircles the iris as they mature. This ring is similar to an age-ring that may develop in humans (as they age) called arcus lipoides, and does not affect vision.The eyes of an elephant are located on the sides of the head and therefore provide bet-ter peripheral vision (angle of vision extending from the sides to the rear), rather than binocular vision (eyes located on the front of the face, in which fields of vision overlap, creating depth perception).

Olfactory:Elephants have a keen sense of smell, detecting water sources up to 19.2 km (12 mi.) away.

Nostrils are located at the tip of the trunk and function in breathing, smelling, and draw-ing water in to squirt into the mouth. The elephants’ sense of smell is in constant use, with the trunks moving back and forth, detecting new scents and information.

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Touch:Elephants are very tactile in nature. Elephants use all parts of their body to interact with one another in all forms of behavior, including parental—offspring, playful, ag-gressive, defensive, exploratory, sexual, and anti—predator.

The trunk is one of the most tactile appendages elephants have. It is used to stroke, touch, explore, caress, or reassure in care—taking and may also be used to slap or block in defense or dominance situations.

The trunk is so sensitive to touch that it is capable of perceiving pressure differences as light 0.25 mm (0.01 in.) in depth, which is equivalent to a light brush against the skin.The strength of an elephant’s trunk is capable of lifting weights in excess of 250 kg (550 lb.).

Elephant trunks have extensive sensory motor cells, called pacinian corpuscles, that enable them to have a strong sense of touch. The pacinian corpuscles are composed of concentric membranes of connective tissue, similar to the layers of an onion. Be-tween each layer of connective tissue is a slimy gel. When a movement or vibration is detected, the pressure deforms the gel and connective tissue layers of the pacinian corpuscles. This stimulates nerve endings and sends a signal to the brain.

Pacinian corpuscles are also found in the soles of elephant feet, assisting in the detec-tion of seismic vibrations (shaking, vibrating movement of the Earth).

Once a scent is drawn in through thee nostrils, there is a series of seven olfactory turbi-nals, located in the nasal cavity. Turbinals are curls of bone that have millions of olfac-tory receptor cells associated with them.If smelling does not provide enough information, elephants may collect the substance with the trunk. Then the chemical information is passed on to its Jacobson’s organ, a chemical—detection unit located in the soft tissue of the upper palate (roof of the mouth). The organ is attached to the oral/nasal cavities and primarily functions to de-tect the estrus (reproductive) status of a female. This behavior is known as the flehmen response and is characterized by the elephant curling its trunk into its mouth.

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Many animals including elephants survived the Asian tsunami in 2004. It is thought these animals had advanced warning to the tsunami due to their detection of seismic vibrations. The tsunami’s approaching vibrations were detected by the pacinian cor-puscles in the elephant’s feet and alerted them to the approaching storm.

i) Self Awareness:

Elephants have been found to recognise themselves in a mirror, putting them in an exclusive club of self-awareness whose other members are great apes (including hu-mans) and bottlenose dolphins.

“The social complexity of the elephant, its well-known altruistic behaviour and, of course, its huge brain, made the elephant a logical candidate species for testing in front of a mirror,” said Joshua Plotnik, a psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta, who led a team whose study was published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Acad-emy of Sciences.

An 8ft mirror was put in the elephant enclosure at the Bronx zoo in New York and a watch kept on its three inhabitants. The first question was if they greeted their reflec-tion as if meeting another individual - they did not make this mistake, and used the mirror to inspect themselves, for example, moving their trunks to look at the inside of their mouths.

“Elephants have been tested in front of mirrors before, but previous studies used rela-tively small mirrors kept out of the elephants’ reach,” Dr Plotnik said. “This study is the first to test the animals in front of a huge mirror they could touch, rub against, and try to look behind.”

Inspecting the mirror and trying to look behind it - as did the Bronx elephants - is an-other indicator of self-awareness. One of the three also passed the “mark” test when painted in a place it would normally be unable to see. It touched the paint mark on its head after looking in the mirror.

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j) Diet/Food:

Elephants are herbivores, and spend up to 16 hours a day eating plants. Their diets are highly variable, both seasonally and across habitats and regions. They are primar-ily browsers, feeding on the leaves, bark, and fruits of trees and shrubs, but they may also eat considerable grasses and herbs. As is true for other non ruminant unglulates, elephants only digest approximately 40% of what they eat. They eat between 149 and 169 kg (330-375 lb.) of vegetation daily. Sixteen to eighteen hours, or nearly 80% of an elephant’s day is spent feeding.

Elephants consume grasses, small plants, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark, and roots. Tree bark is a favorite food source for elephants. It contains calcium and roughage, which aids digestion. Tusks are used to carve into the trunk and tear off strips of bark.

They require about 68.4 to 98.8 L (18 to 26 gal.) of water daily, but may consume up to 152 L (40 gal.). An adult male elephant can drink up to 212 L (55 gal.) of water in less than five minutes.

When an elephant becomes very old, the last set of teeth is worn to stumps, and it must rely on softer foods to chew. Very elderly elephants often spend their last years exclusively in marshy areas where they can feed on soft wet grasses.

To supplement the diet, elephants will dig up earth to obtain salt and minerals. The tusks are used to churn the ground. The elephant then places dislodged pieces of soil into its mouth, to obtain nutrients. Frequently these areas result in holes that are several feet deep and vital minerals are made accessible to other animals. Ex: Over time, African elephants have hollowed out deep caverns in a volcano mountainside on the Ugandan border, to obtain salt licks and minerals. Hills have been carved by Asian elephants in India and Sumatra searching for salt and minerals. These carved areas in the landscape provide valuable food and shelter resources for a diverse array of native wildlife.

Diana Reiss of Columbia University in New York said that the research helped explain the society in which elephants lived: “Humans, great apes, dolphins and elephants, well known for their superior intelligence and complex social systems, are thought to possess the highest forms of empathy and altruism in the animal kingdom.”

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k) Sleep:

Elephants are not good sleepers. Elephants feel that they must be on the alert for pred-ators. This is true of elephants in the wild and elephants in the zoo. As a result, ele-phants sleep a maximum of four hours per day/night. These four hours is not in a row. Elephants sleep for about 30 minutes and then get up for something to eat and then lie back down. They repeat this cycle until they get about four hours of sleep. The reason is that elephants are big animals. Their bodies are quite heavy so when they lie down to get some rest they put all their weight on their bones. This is not comfort-able for the elephant.

Elephants don’t sleep together and in fact, they don’t even sleep at the same time. This goes back to their watchfulness for predators. In a herd of elephants you will find some elephants awake at night while some are just going to sleep and others are just waking up. Since the elephants don’t sleep long anyway you will never find a time when all of the elephants are asleep. If an elephant is asleep and there is a noise in another cage (at the zoo) the elephant will quickly jump up and stay awake. So elephants are very light sleepers.

l) Effects & Balance In Nature:

Elephants can have profound impacts on the ecosystems they occupy, and both posi-tive and negative effects on other species especially with their foraging activities. By pulling down trees to eat leaves, breaking branches, and pulling out roots, they reduce woody cover, creating clearings in forests, converting forests to savannas, and convert-ing savannas to grasslands. These changes tend to benefit grazers at the expense of browsers.

Dung beetles and termites both eat elephant feces. During the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig into river beds to reach underground sources of water. These holes may then become essential sources of water for other species. Elephants make paths through their environment that are used by other animals. Some of these pathways have apparently been used by several generations of elephants, used by humans and eventually even been converted to roads.

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m) Elephant Caves:

The young calves are tended not only by their mothers, but also by other females of the herd. There are many eyewitness accounts of the females in the herd gathering around to welcome the new-born. Within minutes of the birth, the mother and other females trumpet, rumble and scream, oozing temporal secretions down the side of their faces. During these initial minutes the mother also attempts to help the new-born rise to its feet. This is a matter of survival since the new-born must stand to drink its mother’s milk. Without this necessary food, the calf is sure to perish.

Check this Link to see how a baby calf is born:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLTYLkOe-8c

New-born elephants are born with an incredible mass of 77-113 kg. But they weight only 4% of an adult female’s weight and only 2% of an adult males. New-borns may consume 11.4 litres of milk a day. Young calves commence weaning from the first year of life until the tenth year of life. The brain of new-born elephants is 30-40% of the size of that of an adult .Mothers allocate care and interact differently depending on the baby’s sex.

This kinship and social contact allows the young elephants to successfully reach other stages in life cycles. Infancy is not only an important time for the young calves, but also for the young mothers-to-be. It is through the close interaction and kinship between the two that allows the young females to develop necessary skills required for motherhood. However, first time mothers can be very awkward with their babies and depending on their experience can even play a role in hindering the calf from feeding.

The infancy life-cycle of an elephant is not a brief period. Young elephants are started on the process of weaning in their first year of life and may continue to be weaned until their tenth year, or until another sibling is born. This prolonged dependency period is vital to the elephant. As a minimum, the African elephant calf is entirely dependent (emotionally and physically) on his/her mother for three to five years.

The elephant is an amazingly social creature. This particular period in development can be viewed as extended social contact. Also, it is clear evidence of the well documented fact that it plays an important educational period for elephants while their brains de-velop and they learn important survival and cultural knowledge.

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Due to a calf’s fairly underdeveloped brain, the elephant is very much like a blank slate which must be shaped over the upcoming years. The elephant is quite similar to the human and many of the other great apes in this one particular way; a great deal of brain development go on outside of the womb. Specifically, the brain of a new-born elephant is about 30-40% of the size of that of an adult. Amazingly, this opens worlds of possibility for complex learning, social development, and the formation of culture. In this situation a species tends to rely less upon instinctual behaviors and more upon socially learned behaviors within each individuals genetic boundary.

Also, this stage of development lays the foundation for the caregiver(s) to play a strong role in shaping the particular being growing up. The new-born elephant is born with a minimal amount of “innate” knowledge. For example, despite a calf’s “precocious” na-ture, he/she lack the ability to use its trunk with any real skill. Hence as the calf grows and through experience, it will understand what it can do with its trunk (paralleling a human baby learning how to walk). The young calf will within time comprehend that it is to be used as an extra hand to pick up items, to scratch with, to drink with, etc.

The major activity infant elephants are involved in is feeding, resting and travelling. This actually accounts for well over 80% of general observations in time sampling. As the calves get older (12-60+ months), they spend less time resting and travelling and much more time feeding. Also, as can be expected the time spent suckling decreases with age. Elephants typically are fully weaned at around 5 to 6 years of age.

Also, the distance between an elephant calf and his/her mother increases with age. Overall, females tended to remain quite close to the mother and as expected the males were much more independent.

Within the first three months of birth, a young calf’s food intake is typically provided solely by the mother. Up to two years, the calf is very nutritionally dependent on the mother. After two years of age, the shift of emphasis is upon independent feeding de-spite the fact that the mother’s milk remains an important part of a calf’s diet.

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n) Diseases In Elephants:

How do you know an elephant is healthy?Constant motion—ears flapping, tail or trunk swinging.Eyes clear and bright; a small amount of clear discharge from the conjunctival sac is nor-mal.Mouth, tongue, and inside of the trunk a rosy pink.Tip of the trunk moist.Skin soft and resilient.Moisture present at the base of the nailNeither too fat nor too lean.Appetite good, appears content.Well-formed dung, brown in color (color may vary with diet); a normal amount is passed with no evidence of straining.Urine copious in amount, faintly yellow, with a pleasant odor; no straining during urina-tion.

Illness is common amongst elephants and can be a serious threat to the survival of the herd. Elephant pox seems to be a strain of normal cow pox and is one of the most danger-ous diseases for elephants. Most often, it is spread to the elephants from rodents. It is le-thal, and was responsible for the death of many elephants until vaccination programmes became available. Rabies is a disease one would not associate with elephants, but this is another fatal disease they face. Fortunately, it is not passed on to the other members of the herd. Other serious illnesses that affect elephants include tetanus, tuberculosis, anthrax, Encephalomyocarditis (EMC, EMCV), salmonella poisoning, muscular-skeletal disease, periodontal disease, locomotive disease and digestive disease, especially colic.

How do you etect when an elephant is ill?Listless, decreased movement, unusual behavior, exercise intolerance.Dull or sunken eyes, increased tear flow, thick discharge.Mucous membranes pale, muddy, bright red, or dry.Discharge from the trunk, coughing, abnormal respiratory sounds.Dry skin, loss of elasticity, wounds.Weight loss, sunken abdomen, prominent ribs. Deceased appetite, anorexia.Change in urine or feces (amount, color); straining.Lameness.Obvious pain.Any unusual swelling or protrusion.

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0) Geographicsl Distribution of Elephants:

We are going to narrow down to the Asian elephant due to the geographic constraints of this thesis.

The Status and Geographical Distribution of Asian Elephants

The Asian Elephant population is officially listed as highly endangered and is under threat across the whole of its current range. The situation is so serious that the elephant is in real danger of being extinct within 3 generations.Six thousand years ago the Asian elephant ranged over a vast area spreading from what is now modern day Iraq and Syria, across the whole swathe of the Indian sub continent, southeast Asia and up into central China. Large populations were also found on the islands of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Borneo. It is reasonable to assume that elephant numbered in the millions.

As human populations increased the elephant came under pressure and its range began to reduce but even in the 17th century the numbers of elephants were vast. We know for a fact that the Moghul Emperor Jehangir had 113,000 captive elephants in his Empire.

No accurate figure are available for a hundred years ago but in Thailand alone it is esti-mated that there were over 100,000 elephants so extrapolating by taking Thailand’s current percentage of the population we can estimate that in 1900 there were as many as a million elephants across Asia. Today the total stand at between 38,534 and 52,566 wild elephants and 14,535 and 15,300 domesticated elephants in Asia with perhaps another 1,000 scat-tered around zoos in the rest of the world.

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A table of elephant population in Asia

These figures are provided by Raman Sukumar in 2006 from the IUCN/SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group in 2004. Although the veracity of the figures is questionable they are with out doubt the best available.

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Not only has the total number Asian elephants dramatically declined but there has also been a catastrophic shrinkage in the elephants geographical range. The reduction of elephant habitat as shown in the map below has left remaining populations struggling in isolated pockets.

Asian Elephant Distribution - Map

p) Migration:

Both Asian and African elephants migrate and generally follow the same migratory routes annually. Migration distances vary considerably depending on environmental conditions. During a prolonged dry season in Africa, elephant migration distances were recorded to extend over 100 km (62 mi.). Studies documenting Asian elephants in de-ciduous forests of southern India, with numerous water sources, reported elephant mi-gration to extend between 20 and 50 km (12 and 31 mi).

African elephants usually migrate at the beginning of the dry season, between June and November; heading toward more hospitable locations near rivers and water sources that are not prone to drying. When the rainy season arrives, usually from October to De-cember and March to June, elephant herds return to native regions to feed on the lush, green vegetation the rains helped regenerate. Elephant migration allows time for the re—growth of vegetation in exhausted grazing areas.

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Elephant migrations occur in one of the following three ways. The migration method depends on environmental conditions.

Individual family groups separate themselves from the larger herd. This method may be used in response to limited food supplies encountered during a dry season migra-tion. If food sources are scarce along the migratory route, it is more efficient to travel as individual families, rather than large herds. Family groups traveling in this manner are generally led by a dominant female at the front of the group and another at the back, to guard the rear. The young travel between the dominant females for protection and supervision.

Several family groups, usually between two and five, may form a larger group called bond groups for migration. Bond groups provide additional security due to more sets of watchful eyes. Females share leadership and supervisory responsibilities based on age, experience, and temperament. These groups require more food resources along the migratory route but benefit from increased protection.

Occasionally, entire populations of elephant herds join together in mass migration, with estimates as high as 500 individuals reported. This method provides maximum protection for herds but food resources must be present along the migratory route in sufficient quantity.

q) Products of Elephants:

The most famous and demanded of elephant products is ivory. However, all sales of ivory are banned until 2016 by the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This does not, unfortunately, mean that it is not used on the black market. Poachers still kill elephants in large numbers for their tusks, which are used in the East for medicinal purposes.South Africa has one of the best conservation initiatives for the elephant. It has, in fact, been such a success that elephant culling has had to be implemented. This involves the decision to kill off an entire herd or no elephant at all. All by-products of these cullings may be sold, except the ivory. However, special permission was obtained by South Africa and two other lands to hold one-off sales of the excess ivory under the

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supervision of the United Nations. Commercial uses of ivory include the manufacture of piano and organ keys, billiard balls, handles and smaller objects of decorative value.

In the modern industry, ivory is used in the manufacture of electrical appliances, includ-ing specialised electrical equipment for airplanes and radar. It is also used for buttons and Scottish bagpipes. In China and Japan, ivory has been used for inlay and small objects, es-pecially for miniature statues and carvings. These are usually of great precision and beauty of detail. During the opium wars, it was used for the opium pipes. In the last few centuries in Europe and North America, ivory has been employed to decorate furniture, for small stat-ues and, occasionally, as a surface for miniature paintings.

The next most common product used from culled elephants is that of the leather. This ex-otic leather is thick and very durable and has a course, rippled texture. All companies selling or dealing with elephant leather have to comply to the strict requirements of the Conven-tion of International Treaty of Endangered Species (CITES). Products include belts, shoes, jackets, furniture upholstery, as well as bags and flask coverings.

For thousands of years, African Mythology has believed that, by wearing an elephant hair bracelet, you will be prosperous and healthy and not become sick or poor. Elephant hair used in jewellery may come from culled, poached or live elephants, where they have natu-rally left hair behind after rubbing against trees. It is used in rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces and is woven together to form a strong band. Some elephant hair can reach lengths of up to 100cm, which is impressive for an animal that is officially classified as being hairless.

One of the most eco-friendly products of elephants comes from the dung. Paper is made from the dung by collecting it and boiling it for 3 hours to cleanse it. It is then strained and left to dry. Because most of the elephant’s diet passes through its system without being digested, this is a very fibrous paper. It has provided employment to disadvantaged local people without much of a capital outlay as the dung is freely available. The paper is sold to local businesses or directly to tourists, while some is exported internationally. The demand for this eco friendly product has grown exponentially in the last 10 years.

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Loss of habitat

As is the nature with the human race, hunting has been carried out in absolute excess. Elephants are hunted for their ivory and hides, thus they lose thier own habitat one by one.

Products of Elephants

The most famous and demanded of elephant products is ivory. However, all sales of ivory are banned un-til 2016 by the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This does not, unfortunately, mean that it is not used on the black market. Poachers still kill elephants in large numbers for their tusks, which are used in the East for medicinal purposes.

South Africa has one of the best conservation initiatives for the elephant. It has, in fact, been such a suc-cess that elephant culling has had to be implemented. This involves the decision to kill off an entire herd or no elephant at all. All by-products of these cullings may be sold, except the ivory. However, special permission was obtained by South Africa and two other lands to hold one-off sales of the excess ivory under the supervision of the United Nations. Commercial uses of ivory include the manufacture of piano and organ keys, billiard balls, handles and smaller objects of decorative value.

In the modern industry, ivory is used in the manufacture of electrical appliances, including specialised electrical equipment for airplanes and radar. It is also used for buttons and Scottish bagpipes. In China and Japan, ivory has been used for inlay and small objects, especially for miniature statues and carv-ings. These are usually of great precision and beauty of detail. During the opium wars, it was used for the opium pipes. In the last few centuries in Europe and North America, ivory has been employed to deco-rate furniture, for small statues and, occasionally, as a surface for miniature paintings.

The next most common product used from culled elephants is that of the leather. This exotic leather is thick and very durable and has a course, rippled texture. All companies selling or dealing with elephant leather have to comply to the strict requirements of the Convention of International Treaty of Endan-gered Species (CITES). Products include belts, shoes, jackets, furniture upholstery, as well as bags and flask coverings.

For thousands of years, African Mythology has believed that, by wearing an elephant hair bracelet, you will be prosperous and healthy and not become sick or poor. Elephant hair used in jewellery may come from culled, poached or live elephants, where they have naturally left hair behind after rubbing against trees. It is used in rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces and is woven together to form a strong band. Some elephant hair can reach lengths of up to 100cm, which is impressive for an animal that is officially classified as being hairless.

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One of the most eco-friendly products of elephants comes from the dung. Paper is made from the dung by collecting it and boiling it for 3 hours to cleanse it. It is then strained and left to dry. Because most of the elephant’s diet passes through its system without being digested, this is a very fibrous paper. It has provided employment to disadvantaged local people without much of a capital outlay as the dung is freely available. The paper is sold to local businesses or directly to tourists, while some is exported inter-nationally. The demand for this eco friendly product has grown exponentially in the last 10 years.

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How it walks

Elephants walk on the tips of their fingers and on the tips of their toes. They are so-called digitigrades and belong to a group which also contains cloven-hoofed and perissodactyl animals, such as horses, cattle, sheep or also camels and rhinos.

Behind the tips of their toes there is a relatively soft cushion. This is why it not ‘sooo’ bad if an elephant stands on your foot, as long as it doesn’t end up under one of the elephant’s toe nails.The sole of an elephant’s foot has an irregular profile, which gives it traction and stops it from slipping on smooth surfac-es such as snow and ice. Below is an picture of an illustrated walk cycle.

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How it runs

Some old records state around 30 km/hour. The only tests I heard about though, were made with 42 elephants on 30 meter distance in Surin, Thailand 10 times a day, which gave a record of 24 km per hour for the fastest elephant, while only three elephants ran faster than 15 km/hour. I doubt that you can run away from a attacking elephant... But since they are walking on “pillars”, they can only keep this speed for a very short time. At speed over ap 16 km ph they change from a fast walking to a “jumping” running, where at least one foot is on the ground.

Picture of a Elephant foot

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Skeletal system

Because of the large body size of the elephants, the skeleton must be very large and strong to support the body weight. The whole skeleton weight is approximately 16.5 per-cent of body weight.

Skull

The elephant skull is large but light weight because of the pneumatic bone which has air cavities making it appear like a honey comb or sponge on cut section.. Pneumatization of the bones of the skull occurs the elephant is 3-4 year old. The big skull allows strong attachment of muscles supporting the movements of the trunk, ear and jaw, and houses various organs especially the brain, eyes, ears, tusks, and upper part of respiratory and digestive tracts. The largest cavity in the skull contains the brain. Molar teeth are in the maxillary and mandiblar bones and the tusks alveolar sockets of the maxillary bones. The skull structure is not different between genders but the skulls of young elephants are more dorally ventrally flattened than those of adult elephants.

Skeleton of the elephant, Elephas maximus (a) and Loxodonta africana (b)

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Sense organsa) Elephants are very intelligent animals, with a sophisticated system of communi-cating. Like whales, they can create sounds that are outside the range of human hearing (called subsonic* sound). By blowing air through large chambers in their nasal passages they can create low rumbling sounds that can carry as far as five miles (8kms). No matter how loudly you screamed, even through a megaphone or a public address microphone, you couldn’t be heard by another person five miles away! Being able to communication with other groups of elephants helps the elephants to detect danger and warn others, as well as to find water, which is extremely scarce in some parts of Africa. African elephants are intelligent enough to be able to detect water flowing underground and have been seen digging up water in a riverbed that has run dry. Elephants really are amazing ani-mals!!!!b) This under normal conditions would mean elephants can communicate and hear a message within a fifty+ square kilometres range. With David Larom and Michael Garstang´s work with long range calls and atmospheric conditions it was found that el-ephants have the capability of 9.8kilometres away and within a 100 square kilometre

Vertebrae

The vertebral column of the Asian elephants are divided into basic five regions, cervical (7), thoracic (19-20), lumbar (4-5), sacral (4-5) and coccygial or caudal (24-33), the paren-theses is a numbers of each region. The vertebral column is a curved linear, arch-like struc-ture in Asian elephants, but is more nearly a straight horizontal line in African elephants. The movement of elephant vertebrae is limited because of fixed and tightened vertebral junctions.

Ribs

The numberof ribs is 19-20 pairs depending on the subspecies for the Asian elephants, and 21 pairs for African elephants. The first six pairs of ribs are sternal ribs, the next nine pairs are asternal ribs and last four or so pair of ribs are true floating ribs in the Asian el-ephants.

Sternum

These flat cartilages and bones lay in the pectoral position and serve as points of attach-ment for ribs and pectoral muscles, whileprotecting the organs in the thoracic cavity.

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range. At evenings in Africa the air temperature within 300 metres of the ground becomes inverted causing low-frequency sound to be reflected back to the ground instead of nor-mally dissipating into the sky. Basically, around dusk elephants can communicate with each other over a much greater distance.

Eye, Mouth & ear functions

The opening of the mouth of the elephant is smaller relative to body size compared to many other mammals. The oral cavity has molar teeth, a tongue, and openings of the salivary ducts and salivary glands. The mouth is connected to the pharynx and the upper respiratory tract. The strong mandibular movement and coordination of teeth and tongue function are important in generating the horizontal grinding action of mastication of elephants.

RespiratorySystem

The respiratory tract of elephants is comprised of the conducting portion (external nares, nasal tubes, internal nares, pharynx, larynx and trachea) and the respiratory portion (bronchi, bronchioles, alveolar duct and alveolar sac in lung). Sound is produced from larynx. The lungs are attached to the thoracic walls and diaphragm, oblitherating the po-tential pleural space normally maintained in negative pressure to assist breathing in other mammals. . Unlike most other mammals, elephants rely on intercostals and diaphrag-matic muscle movement alone to inflate and deflate the lungs. If there is an impediment

Body Systems & Organs

Digetive System:

a) Elephants have a fairly simple mammalian digestive system b) Elephants have a fairly small mouth for the size of their body c) Not much digestion takes place in the stomach, as its main function is storage d) The intestines in a large male bull can achieve a length of 19 metrese) Fecal matter can be used to judge the size of an elephant, since it retains its shape after falling to the ground

Blood Circulation

a) The heart of an African bull can weigh up to 28 kg b) The ventricles of the African elephant are separated at the apex c) Red blood cell count is much lower in elephants than in other animals

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Gastrointestinal system

Elephants are herbivoroussingle stomached or monogastric animals. The major alimen-tary structures are similar to those of the horse. Elephants lack a gall bladder and rely on hind gut fermentation of fecal matter in their large cecum using bacterial symbiosis. The elephant digestive tract consists of (from oral to aboral) the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestine, cecum, rectum and anus. Accessory organs such as molar teeth, tongue, salivary gland, liver and pancreas completethe system. The diges-tive system of elephant is not very efficient at absorption of nutrients. Elephants digest and absorb only about 44 percent of what they eat. The consumption of an adult Asian elephant is approximately 150-200 kilograms of food (10 percent of body weight) and 200 liters of water per day, although larger amounts of food may be required in some circum-stances.

Nervous SystemThe elephant nervous system is comprised of a brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. The brain to body size ratio is smaller than other mammals. The brains of male elephants weigh between 4.2-4.5 kilograms and the brains of female elephants weigh bewteen 3.6-4.2 kilograms. Although the elephants have a small brain to body size ratio, they are one of the most intelligent animals, with a highly complex and developed pattern of gyri and sulci. No intelligence difference has been observed between male and female elephants. The spinal cord of the elephant has two enlargements referred to as the cervical and lum-bar enlargements. These enlargements contain numberous nerve cells that function in control of the limbs. ,

Urinary system

This system is comprised of bilateral kidneys, and ureters, a urinary bladder, urethra and urethal opening. Like the ox, elephant kidney s are multilobar. An elephant kidney has 5-7 lobules. The urinary bladder capacity of an adult elephant is isapproximtely 6-18 liters. Normal elephants urinate 10-15 times per day.

in the muscular excersion of the key muscles in respiration for the elephant, the resulting dyspnea is severe. For example, long periods of sternal recumbency increase abdominal pressure thereby limiting diaphragm motion. Elephants poorly tolerate sternal recum-bency and assume lateral recumbency when they lay down. This can be observed at times when elephants sleep.

a) Elephants have no pleural cavity b) Elephant lungs attach directly to the walls of the chest cavity and to the diaphragm c) Respiratory movements are dependent on chest musculature (not on inflating lungs by negative pressure in the pleural cavity, as is usual in mammals)

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BrainThe brain of the elephant is larger than any other land mammal and it is located in the back of the skull well away from the forehead. Elephants are born with 35% of the mass of the adult brain The elephant is among the more intelligent animals The brain weight of the bull African elephant is 4.2-5.4 kg The brain weight of the cow African elephant is 3.6-4.3 kg Brain development in elephants is similar to that of humans

Liver and pancreasAlthough the elephants lack the gall bladder, bile is secreted and passes to the small in-testine throughmultiple ducts. The bile functions to enhance lipid digestion and absorp-tion in the intestine. Pancreatic secretions function to facilitate protein and carbohydrate digestion along with secretions from the glands in intestinal wall.

Heart The elephant heart is large ( about 12-21 kilograms). It is apple shaped with double ven-tricular apices. Large sinuses moderate the high blood pressure from cardiac contraction to prevent damage of peripheral blood vessels. These sinuses can found in both sides of the temporal area, along the trachea, sternum, axillae and inguinal areas. The vasculature of elephants is thicker walled and stronger than found in most other mammals.

Blood

The blood components of the elephant are similar to other mammals, except that the blood cells are larger.

Lymph and lymphoid organsThe thymus, tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen are the lymphoid organs of the elephant. The lymphatic system plays an important role in the elephant immune response.

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Reproductive systems

Male

The testes are located inside the abdominal cavity. They are tennis ball sized structures just posterior to the kidneysThe elephant penis is the muscular type similar to that of horses and humans. The length of penis is about 2 meters, and it is S-shaped. The other organs involved in the male elephant reproductive system are the seminal vesicles, the sperm storage organ, and prostate gland, the ampullae and the bulbourethral glands.

Female

Like a cow or mare, the female elephant has bilateral uterine horns. The ovaries are locat-ed behind the kidneys. The genital canal is 68-88 centimeters long and consists of a vagi-na, vaginal os and vestibule. The vulva position is between the inguinal regions, ventrally, which is different from most other mammals which have the vaginal oss located perine-ally under the tail. The clitoris lays in the vulva and is about 40 centimeters long, about the same length as thevulva. The two mammary glands are located pectorally between the forelegs. The placenta of the elephant is zonary. The gestation period of the elephant is very long, about 17-22 months. A male calf has a longer gestation period,( average 21-24 month) compared to a female calf (17-23 months).

Muscular system

Muscle tissue is one of the four basic tissue types that exist in the human body. There are three different muscle tissues: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth. They all have different organi-zations. Skeletal muscle tissue cells are long, cylindrical, striated, and have many nucleus. Cardiac muscle tissue, just like the skeletal is also in striations. However, these cells are short and branched. Unlike, the skeletal muscle tissue these cells die single nucliated. They are connected by intercolated discs. Smooth muscle tissue is not striated. Cells are short, spindle- shaped. Like the cardiac muscle it too is single nucleated.

The T tubules in a cardiac muscle cell are short and broad and no trads. The T tubules encircle the sarcomeres at the Z lines rather than at the zone of overlap. The SR of a car-diac muscle cell lacks terminal cisternae. The appearance of an action potential triggers calcium release from the SR and contraction of sarcomeres like in skeletal muscle. Cardiac muscle cells are almost totally dependent on aerobic metabolism to obtain the energy needed to continue contracting.

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Story Board

initial work, necessary work.

Shot 1

Shot 2

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Shot 3

Shot 4

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Shot 5

Shot 6

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Model Sheet

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Modeling

Before starting any organic model collect information about anatomy & related images.

Process of modeling

I initially started modeling with the eye part.

Head part modeling will be continued after eye part is completed

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Head modeling will be completed after Jaw & gums part.

Ear modeling should be started after jaw part is completed.

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Now, attach the head parts into a single object.

After completing head part, start trunk modeling

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Attach head with trunk.

Start Body modeling after attaching head with the trunk part.

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Legs part modeling is started after completing of body part.

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Before attaching body with the limbs, vertices should be same..for merging both objects into a single object

Model in Side, Front & Perspective views

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Model - Top, Perspective, Front & Side views

UnwrappingUsing Head us UV layout software, unwrapping is done.For texturing the elephant model, I used two UV’s sets.

Snapshot of the unwrap, which is obtained in the Headus UV layout software. 70

Sculpting

Step by step sculpting is done, using different layers in the mudbox.Final output of sculpting.

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Texturing

After unwrapping the model in Headus UV layout software, the elephant model is exported in .obj file format to transfer the UV’s to the original Elephant model in Maya software.Transfer the UV’s of the Elephant model, again exported the final unwrapped model in .obj file format for texturing in Mud box software.

In Mud box, itself coloring is done.If u texture the model in 3d software, 0.05% of seam can be seen.If model is textured using any 2d platform like Photoshop, then seam will be seen clearly. Need to merge the edges of the seam properly in order to avoid the seam visibility.

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After sculpting & texturing the model.Following maps should be extracted from the Mud box software.Color map (Color node), Normal map (Bump node), Vector Displacement map (Displacement node) & Ambient Occlusion map (Blend with color map) - Multiply (Blend mode).

Color map

Normal map

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Anatomy

Vector Displacement map

References used for modeling & texturing are

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Images

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Above: Skinning of the Knee part

Below: Skinning, front Leg, thigh

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Above: Skinning of the Trunk part

Below: Overall controls

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Above: Joint Structure

Below: Walk Cycle

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Above: Closeup view of the controls for ears

Below: Front view of Walk Cycle

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Above: Depth Pass

Below: Final Gather_shadow pass

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Above: Diffuse Pass

Below: Indirect Pass

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Above: Occlusion Pass

Below: Shadow Pass

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Above: Final Composed Shot

Below: Shot being composed in After Effects

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Composed shots

Shot 2

Shot 1

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Shot 3

Shot 4

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Shot 6

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