Asian elephant

• 1. Introduction

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  The Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, is the largest living land animal in Asia and the only surviving species in its genus, Elephas. Since 1986 the IUCN Red List has classed it as Endangered. The reason is a drop of at least half in its numbers across three elephant generations, a span of roughly 60-75 years.

  Three questions run through what follows. How was the species named, and why do scientists still disagree about how many kinds there are? How does an animal with so large a brain court, warn and call across distance? And what happens when it competes for land with people who have lived beside it for thousands of years?

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• 2. Names and Ancestors

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  In 1758, in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus published the name Elephas maximus. That book is the foundational work of modern zoological taxonomy. His description drew on a mix of sources and specimens, and some of them later proved to be African elephants. Much of it rested on a 1693 account by John Ray of an elephant skeleton. That skeleton survives in the collection of the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence. It almost certainly belonged to Hansken, a female from Sri Lanka who toured Europe in the 17th century. In 2014 it was formally declared the lectotype specimen for the species.

  Georges Cuvier named an elephant from India Elephas indicus in 1798, and in 1847 Coenraad Jacob Temminck named one from Sumatra Elephas sumatranus. Frederick Nutter Chasen grouped all three as subspecies of one species in 1940. They count as valid taxa today. Even so, phylogeographic and morphological analyses suggest that Sri Lankan and Indian elephants differ too little to justify separate subspecies. The Sri Lankan elephant is the largest of the three. Its skin is the darkest, with the biggest and most distinct pale patches on the ears, face, trunk and belly. The Indian elephant is generally grey, lighter than the Sri Lankan form but darker than the Sumatran.

  A possible fourth subspecies lives in northeastern Borneo, mainly in Sabah in Malaysia and sometimes in Kalimantan in Indonesia. Paules Deraniyagala proposed the name Elephas maximus borneensis in 1950. He worked from an illustration in National Geographic magazine rather than a living animal, which did not satisfy the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The elephants themselves are smaller than the other subspecies, with larger ears, a longer tail and straight tusks. Genetic analysis points to a split from the mainland population about 300,000 years ago. A 2003 study using mitochondrial DNA and microsatellite data traced their stock to the region of the Sunda Islands. It suggested they have been separated from other Southeast Asian elephants since the Pleistocene.

  Deraniyagala also proposed three extinct subspecies, all now treated as the Indian elephant. The Syrian elephant, asurus, rested on fossil remains and Bronze Age illustrations. The Chinese elephant, rubridens, came from a Chinese bronze statuette. The Javan elephant, sondaicus, came from an illustration of a carving on the Buddhist monument of Borobudur.

  The nearest relatives of the genus Elephas are the extinct mammoths, and the two lineages split around 7 million years ago. Elephas began in Sub-Saharan Africa during the Pliocene. Its earliest known species, Elephas ekorensis, lived in East Africa roughly 5-4.2 million years ago. The genus spread across Africa and then into southern Asia. The oldest Asian remains come from the Siwalik Hills of the Indian subcontinent, belong to Elephas planifrons, and date to about 3.6-3.2 million years ago. The modern species is thought to descend from Elephas hysudricus, which appeared about 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Early Pleistocene. Bones assigned to the Syrian form turn up in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, dated from at least 1800 BC to likely 700 BC.

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• 3. Built for Asia

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  Two hemispherical bulges rise from the forehead of an Asian elephant, where the African elephant has a flat front. The highest point of the body is the head, and the back is convex or level. African elephants have two tips on the trunk, while the Asian species has one. It therefore wraps the trunk around a food item and squeezes it into its mouth. In exchange it has finer muscle coordination, which lets it carry out more complex tasks. The ears are small, with their upper borders folded sideways.

  Five nail-like structures sit on each forefoot, and four on each hind foot. The skeleton has up to 20 pairs of ribs and 34 caudal vertebrae. The enamel plates of the molars are more numerous and set closer together than in African elephants.

  Cows usually lack tusks, and the short ones that do appear are called tushes, visible only when the mouth is open. Some bulls have none either. These are called makhnas, and they are especially common among Sri Lankan elephants. Records show how varied the tusks of other bulls can be. An elephant 11 ft tall, killed by Sir Victor Brooke, had a tusk 8 ft long, nearly 17 in around, weighing 90 lb. A shorter tusk, about 6 ft long, weighed 100 lb, and tusks over 150 lb have reportedly existed.

  Grey is the usual skin colour, though dust and wallowing often hide it under soil. The skin is wrinkled, movable and rich in nerve centres, and it is smoother than that of African elephants. The epidermis and dermis together average 18 mm thick, rising to 30 mm along the back. That thickness protects against bites, bumps and bad weather. The folds add surface area for shedding heat. Even so, the animals tolerate cold better than excessive heat. Skin temperature varies from 24 to 32.9 C, and body temperature averages 35.9 C.

  Fully grown bulls stand about 2.75 m at the shoulder and weigh about 4.0 t. Cows are smaller, at about 2.40 m and 2.7 t. The size gap between the sexes is narrower than in African bush elephants, where bulls average 23% taller, against 15% in Asian elephants. Head and body including the trunk measure 5.5-6.5 m, and the tail adds another 1.2-1.5 m.

  The largest bull on record was shot by the Maharajah of Susang in the Garo Hills of Assam, India, in 1924. It weighed an estimated 7 t, stood 3.43 m at the shoulder and measured 8.06 m from head to tail. Some reports describe individuals as tall as 3.66 m and as long as 7.99 m. In Bardia National Park, a bull known as Raja Gaj was estimated at 11.3 ft at the shoulder, among the biggest Asian bulls.

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• 4. Range and Appetite

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  From India in the west to Borneo in the east, and from Nepal in the north to Sumatra in the south, Asian elephants roam the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. They live in grasslands and in tropical evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, dry deciduous and dry thorn forests. Cultivated land, secondary forest and scrub also hold them. Across this spread they occur from sea level to above 3000 m. In the eastern Himalaya of northeast India they regularly climb past 3000 m in summer at a few sites.

  The global wild population was estimated at 48,323-51,680 in 2019. As of 2017, India held nearly three-fourths of the wild total, with 27,312 elephants. A 2019 estimate put the Indian figure at 27,000-29,000. In China, the species survives only in the prefectures of Xishuangbanna, Simao and Lincang in southern Yunnan, where about 300 individuals were estimated in 2020. In Bangladesh, isolated populations survived in the south-east Chittagong Hills in the early 1990s. Two elephants tracked by satellite in northern Johor and Terengganu National Park in Malaysia spent most of their time in logged-over forest. They spent 75% of their time within 1.5 km of water.

  Eating takes 50-75% of an Asian elephant's day, and an adult can consume up to 150 kg of plant matter. These animals are crepuscular megaherbivores, and they work as both grazers and browsers. They feed on at least 112 plant species, most commonly from the order Malvales, as well as the legume, palm, sedge and true grass families. They browse more in the dry season, when bark makes up a major part of the diet in the cool months. They drink at least once a day and stay close to permanent fresh water. They need 80-200 litres daily and use more for bathing. At times they scrape the soil for clay or minerals.

  Tigers sometimes kill calves, especially those separated from their mothers, stranded from the herd or orphaned. Adults are largely safe from natural predators. In 2011 and 2014, however, two adults were recorded as killed. One was a 20-year-old young cow in Jim Corbett National Park, taken by a single tiger. The other was a sick 28-year-old bull in Kaziranga National Park, brought down and eaten by several tigers hunting cooperatively. Elephants seem to tell the growls of large predators like tigers from those of smaller ones like leopards. They react to leopards with less fear and more aggression.

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• 5. Herds, Voices and Courtship

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  A typical cow-calf unit holds about three adult females, most likely related, plus their offspring. Groups of up to 15 adult females have been recorded. In Sri Lanka's Uda Walawe National Park, observers have seen seasonal gatherings of 17 individuals, calves and young adults included. Bulls leave their mothers on reaching adolescence and live alone or in temporary bachelor groups. For years, scientists assumed that older females, the matriarchs, led the herds, as in African elephants. Researchers now recognise that cows form extensive, fluid social networks, with ties generally weaker than in African bush elephants. Asian elephants also use their forefeet together with the trunk to handle objects, while African elephants rarely use theirs for more than digging.

  Three basic sounds make up the recorded repertoire: growls, squeaks and snorts. Growls carry over short distances. During mild arousal they resonate in the trunk and become rumbles, and for long-distance calling they escalate into roars. Low-frequency growls are infrasonic and occur in many contexts. Squeaks come in two forms. Chirping, a run of short squeaks, signals conflict and nervousness. Trumpets are lengthened, louder squeaks produced in extreme arousal. Snorts mark a change in activity. When an elephant bounces the tip of its trunk, it creates booms that serve as threat displays.

  Between the ages of 10 and 20, bulls go through an annual phenomenon called musth. Testosterone climbs to as much as 100 times its usual level, and the bulls turn aggressive. Paired temporal glands, set between the edge of the eye and the base of the ear, secrete pheromones. One of them, frontalin, was first isolated in bark beetles, and its varying amounts through maturation are linked to the aggression seen in musth. Higher frontalin in a bull's urine tells females his reproductive status. Less developed males that detect a bull in musth usually retreat. Bulls reach sexual maturity around the age of 12-15, yet strong fights over females are extremely rare.

  A compound named (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate carries the female side of the message. Cows release it in urine, and it is also a sex pheromone in numerous insects. It stimulates the vomeronasal organ of the bull. Musth makes males more sensitive to it. A bull gathers the signal through the trunk in a process called flehmen. A bull that is ready moves closer to the urine, while one that is not ready acts timid and tries to distance himself. Female cycles are regulated by surges of luteinizing hormone about three weeks apart. The first surge is not followed by the release of an egg, though some cows still show mating behaviour during it.

  Gestation lasts 18-22 months, and the cow bears one calf, only occasionally twins. The calf is fully developed by the 19th month but stays in the womb to keep growing, so that it can reach its mother's teats to feed. At birth it weighs about 100 kg and suckles for up to three years. A cow usually does not breed again until the calf is weaned, which gives a four to five-year interval between births. Females stay with the herd, while mature males are chased away. Cows mature sexually around 10-15 and keep growing until 30. Bulls fully mature after 25 and grow throughout life. Life expectancy averages about 60 years, some individuals have lived into their late 80s, and generation length is 22 years.

  The neocortex of an Asian elephant is very large and highly developed, a trait shared with humans, apes and certain dolphin species. Its volume of cerebral cortex exceeds that of every other living land animal. Studies suggest abilities in tool use and tool-making similar to those of great apes. Reported behaviours include grief, mimicry, play, altruism, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory and language. Several students of elephant cognition and neuroanatomy are convinced the animals are highly intelligent and self-aware, while others contest that view. One popular belief holds that elephants head for safer ground during tsunamis and earthquakes. Data from two satellite-collared Sri Lankan elephants indicate this may be untrue.

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• 6. Pressure From People

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  Between 1980 and 2003, more than 1,150 humans and 370 elephants died from conflict in Assam alone. In other areas people and elephants have shared land for thousands of years. Elsewhere, the clash brings violence and ends with elephants displaced. The main causes are a growing human population, large-scale development projects and weak top-down governance. Closer causes include deforestation, broken migration routes, expanding agriculture and illegal encroachment into protected areas. Border fencing along the India-Bangladesh border has become a major obstacle to free movement.

  A 2010 study estimated that elephants kill over 400 people each year in India alone. They damage 0.8 to 1 million hectares and affect at least 500,000 families. Crop losses reach up to US$2-3 million annually. In Bangladesh and Sri Lanka the elephant is among the most feared wild animals, though venomous snakes were estimated to claim more than 30 times as many lives in Sri Lanka. Populations in small habitat fragments are much more likely to clash with people. Studies in Sri Lanka add a twist: traditional slash-and-burn farming may create ideal elephant habitat by producing a mosaic of vegetation at different stages of regrowth.

  Most untamed elephants try to avoid humans. If caught off guard by a perceived physical threat, however, they will likely charge. This is especially true of bulls in musth and of cows with young. Gunfire and similar deterrents work on many animals, including tigers, but may fail with elephants and can even worsen the situation. Elephants abused by humans in the past often become rogue elephants, which regularly attack people with no provocation.

  During the 1970s and 1980s, demand for ivory in East Asia drove rampant poaching and a serious decline of elephants in both Africa and Asia. Thailand still has one of the largest and most active black markets for ivory in the world, although openly sold ivory has fallen substantially since 2001. Between 1992 and 1997, at least 24 male elephants there were killed for their tusks. Up to the early 1990s, Vietnamese ivory craftsmen used only Asian elephant ivory from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Before 1990 few tourists visited, and domestic elephants could supply the low demand. Economic liberalisation and tourism then raised demand, and heavy poaching followed.

  Elephant skin has become a newer target. It goes into Chinese medicine and into ornamental beads, and China's State Forestry Administration has issued licences for pharmaceutical products containing it, which makes the trade legal. Four skinned elephants were found in a forest in Myanmar in 2010. Poachers killed 26 elephants there in 2013 and 61 in 2016. According to the NGO Elephant Family, Myanmar is the main source of skin, and a poaching crisis has grown rapidly there since 2010.

  The elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, or EEHV, is a member of the Proboscivirus genus. As of 2011 it was responsible for as many as 70 deaths of zoo and wild Asian elephants worldwide, especially among young calves. Several incidents of calves dying from it have been recorded in Myanmar. The elephant schistosome, a parasitic trematode, also uses the species as a definitive host. The greater one-horned rhinoceros may be another host.

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• 7. Captivity and Conservation

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  About half the world's zoo elephants live in European zoos, where the median life span is 18.9 years. Conspecifics in protected populations in range countries reach 41.6 years. The gap is clearest in Asian elephants. Their infant mortality in zoos is two to three times that seen in Burmese timber camps, and adult survivorship has not improved significantly in recent years. Moving between institutions is one risk factor, as is early removal from the mother. Being born in a zoo rather than imported from the wild is another. Stress and obesity are likely causes. Foot problems are common, tied to lack of exercise, long hours on hard ground and standing in dung. Many are treatable, but mistreatment can bring serious disability or death.

  In North America, demographic analysis shows the captive Asian elephant population is not self-sustaining. First-year mortality is nearly 30 per cent, and fecundity is extremely low through the prime breeding years. Studbook data from North America and Europe covering 1962 to 2006 record 349 captive calves born, of which 142 died prematurely. They died within a month of birth, mostly from stillbirth or from infanticide by the calf's mother or by one of the exhibition mates.

  Young elephants are captured in the wild and illegally imported into Thailand from Myanmar for the tourism industry. Calves work mainly in amusement parks, trained to perform stunts. Many go through a process called breaking in, which may involve being tied up, confined, starved, beaten and tortured, and two-thirds may perish. In the technique known as the training crush, handlers use sleep deprivation, hunger and thirst to subdue the animal, and they drive nails into the ears and feet.

  The Asian elephant is listed on CITES Appendix I and works as a flagship species, used to advance conservation at landscape scale and to raise public awareness. Keeping open the routes elephants prefer to travel, through areas with dense vegetation and few people, is a key aim. World Elephant Day has been marked on the 12th of August each year since 2012. In the United States, zoos and conservation partners have declared August Asian Elephant Awareness Month.

  Karnataka state in India hosts the most Asian elephants of any known area, around 20% of the national total, over an estimated 38,310 km2. A 2013 study estimated 10,000 elephants in the Western Ghats, threatened mainly by poaching and habitat fragmentation. Project Elephant began in 1992 under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, to protect the Indian elephant and its habitats and to set up dedicated reserves. Sri Lanka's elephants now range over only two-fifths of the area they occupied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A 2003 survey there found that local people voiced some disapproval of conservation because farmers saw the animals as pests, yet most participants supported the idea.

  In China, Asian elephants have first-level protection, and Yunnan province has 11 national and regional nature reserves covering about 510000 ha. Xishuangbanna built food bases and planted bananas and bamboo to improve habitat. Thailand's Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary and Tham Than Lot National Park hosted around 250-300 elephants in 2013, though the park has faced encroachment and over-exploitation. In April 2020, India's National Board of Wildlife recommended allowing coal mining in Dehing Patkai National Park. Students and environmental activists answered with an online campaign to stop the project.

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• 8. Elephants in Culture

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  Engravings on seals of the Indus Valley civilisation, dated to the 3rd millennium BC, are the earliest sign that people kept Asian elephants. Bones excavated at Mohenjo-daro show the animals were tamed there and used for work. Decorated elephants appear on seals and were modelled in clay. In later South Asian history the elephant served as a siege engine, a mount in war, a status symbol, a beast of burden and a raised platform for hunting.

  More than 20 verbal commands can be recognised by a trained elephant, because the animals remember tone, melody and words. That skill makes them valuable for carrying heavy loads, and they have been used particularly for timber in jungle areas. They have also served in ceremonies and for carriage. War elephants are reportedly still used by the Kachin Independence Army in Kachin State in northern Myanmar, in its fight against Myanmar's military. About four dozen elephants carry its supplies.

  The Asian elephant is the national animal of Thailand and Laos, and India has declared it a national heritage animal. It features prominently in the Panchatantra fables and the Buddhist Jataka tales. In Hinduism, the god Ganesha has an elephant's head, and the blessings of a temple elephant are highly valued. Elephants dressed in festive outfits often take part in processions.

  The elephant also fills Indian manuscripts and treatises, among them Matanga Lila, or elephant sport, by Nilakantha. The manuscript Hastividyarnava comes from Assam in northeast India. Tusked and tuskless elephants hold the fourth and fifth places in the Burmese animal and planetary zodiac, and the fourth place in the Thai zodiac. For the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, the elephant is the second animal. Among the Dai people of southern China, it is the twelfth animal of their zodiac.

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