Elephant Purse 12cm

Physical Characteristics
The elephant is Earth's largest land animal, although the Asian elephant is slightly smaller than its African cousin. Asian elephants can be identified by their smaller, rounded ears, whereas the African elephant has larger ears to help keep it cool in the scorching African heat. An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose with many functions. It is used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles. The Asian elephant has a fingerlike feature on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items and the African elephant has two fingerlike protrusions.

Habitat
African and Asiatic elephants roam savannas and light forests while the African Forest Elephant mainly lives in African rain forests.

Behaviour
Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust. Both male and female African elephants have tusks they use to dig for food and water and strip bark from trees. Males also use the tusks to battle one another.

Breeding
Herds are composed of mostly females with an older dominant female taking charge. Males are ousted from the herd when they become sexually mature. They roam by themselves and rejoin the females for mating. Elephants have an extremely long gestation period; conception to birth takes 630 days to two years. After a successful birth, an elephant won't conceive again for another 4-5 years.

Diet
As herbivores, Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in a single day. These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food they require to sustain their massive bodies.

Strange and Interesting Facts
Elephants can receive and produce low frequency sounds, transmitting them over long distances to communicate with each other. A low grumble at a decibel not available to human ears keeps the members of the herd in contact as they go about their daily search for food and water.