Search results
People also ask
Where does the word elephant come from?
What does elephant mean?
How many meanings of the noun elephant are there?
What is a nglish elephant?
Sep 15, 2020 · elephant (n.) c. 1300, olyfaunt , from Old French olifant (12c., Modern French éléphant ), from Latin elephantus , from Greek elephas (genitive elephantos ) "elephant; ivory," probably from a non-Indo-European language, likely via Phoenician (compare Hamitic elu "elephant," source of the word for it in many Semitic languages, or possibly from ...
- 한국어 (Korean)
elephant 뜻: 코끼리; 1300년경, olyfaunt, 고대 프랑스어 olifant(12세기, 현대...
- Français (French)
Le elephant joke était populaire dans les années 1960-70....
- Elephantiasis
elephantiasis. (n.). 1580s, from Greek elephantos, genitive...
- 한국어 (Korean)
The word elephant is based on the Latin elephas (genitive elephantis) ' elephant ', which is the Latinised form of the ancient Greek ἐλέφας (elephas) (genitive ἐλέφαντος (elephantos)), probably from a non-Indo-European language, likely Phoenician.
The earliest known use of the noun elephant is in the Middle English period (1150—1500). OED's earliest evidence for elephant is from 1340, in Ayenbite of Inwyt . elephant is a borrowing from Latin.
- Physical Characteristics
- Behavior, Senses, and Reproduction
- Diet and Ecology
- Species and Subspecies
- Evolution
- Threat of Extinction
- Humanity and Elephants
- Referencesisbn Links Support Nwe Through Referral Fees
- Further Reading
Trunk
The proboscis, or trunk, is a fusion of the nose and upper lip, elongated and specialized to become the elephant's most important and versatile appendage. African elephants are equipped with two fingerlike projections at the tip of their trunk, while Asians have only one. According to biologists, the elephant's trunk may have over forty thousand individual muscles in it (Frey), making it sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass, yet strong enough to rip the branches off a tree. Som...
Tusks
The tusks of an elephant are its second upper incisors. Tusks grow continuously; an adult male's tusks will grow about 18 cm (7 in) a year. Tusks are used to dig for water, salt, and roots; to debark trees, to eat the bark; to dig into baobabtrees to get at the pulp inside; and to move trees and branches when clearing a path. In addition, they are used for marking trees to establish territory and occasionally as weapons. Both male and female African elephants have large tusks that can reach o...
Teeth
Elephants' teeth are very different from those of most other mammals. Over their lives they usually have 28 teeth. These are: 1. The two upper second incisors: these are the tusks 2. The milk precursors of the tusks 3. 12 premolars, 3 in each side of each jaw (upper and lower) 4. 12 molars, 3 in each side of each jaw This gives elephants a dental formula of: As noted above, in modern elephants the second incisors in the lower jaw disappear early without erupting, but became tusks in some form...
Social behavior
Elephants live in a structured social order. The social lives of male and female elephants are very different. The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Adult males, on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives. The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that live on the fringes...
Intelligence
With a mass just over 5 kilograms (11 pounds), elephant brains are larger than those of any other land animal, and although the largest whaleshave body masses twenty-fold those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's. A wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, allomothering, play, use of tools, compassion, and self-awareness (BBC 2006) evidence a highly intelligent species on par with cetaceans (DC 19...
Senses
Elephants have well innervated trunks, and an exceptional sense of hearing and smell. The hearing receptors reside not only in ears, but also in trunks that are sensitive to vibrations, and most significantly feet, which have special receptors for low frequency sound and are exceptionally well innervated. Elephants communicate by sound over large distances of several kilometers partly through the ground, which is important for their social lives. Elephants are observed listening by putting tr...
Diet
Elephants are herbivores, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food. Their diet is at least fifty percent grasses, supplemented with leaves, bamboo, twigs, bark, roots, and small amounts of fruits, seeds, and flowers. Because elephants only digest about forty percent of what they eat, they have to make up for their digestive system's lack of efficiency in volume. An adult elephant can consume 140 to 270 kilograms (300–600 pounds) of food a day.
Effect on the environment
Elephants are a species upon which many other organisms depend. One particular example of that are termites mounds: Termites eat elephant feces and often begin building their mounds under piles of elephant feces. Elephants' foraging activities can sometimes greatly affect the areas in which they live. By pulling down trees to eat leaves, breaking branches, and pulling out roots they create clearings in which new young trees and other vegetation can establish itself. During the dry season, ele...
African Elephant
African elephants have traditionally been classified as a single species comprising two distinct subspecies, namely the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta africana cyclotis), but recent DNA analysis suggests that these may actually constitute distinct species (Roca 2001). This split is not universally accepted by experts (AESG 2002) and a third species of African elephant has also been proposed (Eggert et al. 2002). This reclassification has impo...
Asian Elephant
1. A decorated Indian elephant in Jaipur, India. 2. "O Elephante" - Hand-colored engraving drawn by H.Gobin and engraved by Ramus 3. Tusker debarking a tree in Kabini Several subspecies of Elephas maximus have been identified, using morphometric data and molecular markers. Elephas maximus maximus (Sri Lankan elephant) is found only on the island of Sri Lanka. It is the largest of the Asian elephants. There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,500 members of this subspecies left today in the wild, alth...
Although the fossil evidence is uncertain, scientists ascertained through gene comparisons that the elephant family seemingly shares distant ancestry with the sirenians (sea cows) and the hyraxes. In the distant past, members of the hyrax family grew to large sizes, and it seems likely that the common ancestor of all three modern families was some ...
Hunting
Hunting provides a significant risk to the populations of African elephants, both in terms of hunting directly the elephants and in terms of hunting of large predators, allowing competitor herbivores to flourish. A unique threat to the these elephants is presented by hunting for the ivory trade. Adult elephants themselves have few natural predators other thanpeople and, occasionally, lions. Larger, long-lived, slow-breeding animals, like the elephant, are more susceptible to overhunting than...
Habitat loss
Another threat to elephant's survival in general is the ongoing development of their habitats for agricultural or other purposes. Cultivation of elephant habitat has lead to increasing risk of conflicts of interest with human cohabitants. These conflicts kill 150 elephants and up to 100 people per year in Sri Lanka (SNZP). The Asian elephant's demise can be attributed mostly to loss of its habitat. As larger patches of forest disappear, the ecosystem is affected in profound ways. The trees ar...
National parks
Africa's first official reserve, Kruger National Park, eventually became one of the world's most famous and successful national parks. There are, however, many problems associated with the establishment of these reserves. For example, elephants range through a wide tract of land with little regard for national borders. Once a reserve is established and fence erected, many animals find themselves cut off from their winter feeding grounds or spring breeding areas. Some animals may die as a resu...
Harvest from the wild
The harvest of elephants, both legal and illegal, has had some unexpected consequences on elephant anatomy beyond that of the risk of extinction. African ivory hunters, by killing only tusked elephants, have given a much larger chance of mating to elephants with small tusks or no tusks at all. The propagation of the absent-tusk gene has resulted in the birth of large numbers of tuskless elephants, now approaching thirty percent in some populations (compared with a rate of about one percent in...
Domestication and use
Elephants have been working animals used in various capacities by humans. Seals found in the Indus Valley suggest that the elephant was first domesticated in ancient India. However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musthis dangerous and difficult to control. Therefore elephants used by humans have typically been female, war elephants being an exception: Female elephants in battle will run from a male, thus males are used in war. It i...
Elephant rage
Despite its popularity in zoos, and cuddly portrayal as gentle giants in fiction, elephants are among the world's most potentially dangerous animals. They can crush and kill any other land animal, even the rhinoceros. They can experience unexpected bouts of rage and can be vindictive (Huggler 2006). In Africa, groups of young teenage elephants attack human villages in what is thought to be revenge for the destruction of their society by massive cullings done in the 1970s and 80s (Siebert 2006...
African Elephant Specialist Group (AESG). 2002. Statement on the taxonomy of extant Loxodonta. IUCN/SSC. Retrieved January 26, 2009.Animal Corner (AC). n.d. Elephants. Animal Corner. Retrieved January 26, 2009.Bate, D. M. A. 1907. On elephant remains from Crete, with description of Elephas creticus sp.n. Proc. zool. Soc. LondonAugust 1, 1907: 238-250.BBC. 2006. Elephants' jumbo mirror ability. BBCOctober 31, 2006. Retrieved January 26, 2009.Debruyne, R., V. Barriel, and P. Tassy. 2003. Mitochondrial cytochrome b of the lyakhov mammoth (proboscidea, mammalia): New data and phylogenetic analyses of elephantidae. Molecular Phylogenetics...Williams, H. 1989. Sacred Elephant. New York: Harmony Books. ISBN 0517573202.Word Origin Middle English: from Old French elefant, via Latin from Greek elephas, elephant-‘ivory, elephant’.
ELEPHANT meaning: 1. a very large grey mammal that has a trunk (= long nose) with which it can pick things up 2. a…. Learn more.
The meaning of ELEPHANT is a thickset, usually extremely large, nearly hairless, herbivorous mammal (family Elephantidae, the elephant family) that has a snout elongated into a muscular trunk and two incisors in the upper jaw developed especially in the male into long ivory tusks.
