Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus): Facts, Size and Habitat

What does an Asian elephant look like?

The quickest way to recognize an Asian elephant is its head. Seen from the side, the highest point of the body is the top of the head, which has two rounded bulges separated by a shallow groove. The back is level or arched upward, whereas an African elephant’s back dips in the middle and its highest point is the shoulder.

The ears are much smaller than an African elephant’s and their top edges fold outward. The gray skin is wrinkled but smoother than an African elephant’s, and many adults have patches of pink, freckled, unpigmented skin on the trunk, face and ears. Because elephants spray themselves with dust and mud, a wild animal can look red, brown or almost black depending on the local soil.

The trunk ends in one finger-like lip on the upper edge, while African elephants have two. Asian elephants usually have five nail-like toes on each front foot and four on each hind foot. Only some males carry long tusks; females have short “tushes” that barely show or none at all. You can read more in Do Asian elephants have tusks?, and a full side-by-side guide is in African vs Asian elephant.

How big is an Asian elephant?

Adult bulls average about 2.75 m (9 ft) at the shoulder and weigh around 4 tonnes (4.4 US tons). Cows are smaller, averaging about 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) and 2.7 tonnes (3 US tons). The difference between the sexes is less marked than in the African bush elephant, whose bulls can weigh 6 tonnes or more.

From the tip of the trunk to the rump, an adult measures roughly 5.5–6.5 m (18–21 ft), and the tail adds another 1.2–1.5 m (4–5 ft). Sri Lankan elephants are the largest subspecies, and the elephants of northern Borneo are the smallest. The largest Asian bull reliably measured, from northeastern India in 1924, stood about 3.43 m (11.3 ft) at the shoulder and was estimated to weigh around 7 tonnes.

Despite their bulk, Asian elephants can move fast. Researchers who timed elephants in Thailand recorded speeds of up to about 25 km/h (15 mph), using a fast walk that never lifts all four feet off the ground at once.

Where do Asian elephants live?

Asian elephants live in 13 countries: India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, southern China (Yunnan), Malaysia and Indonesia (Sumatra and Borneo). India alone holds roughly 27,000–29,000 wild elephants, more than half of the world total. Across most of the rest of the range, populations are small and divided by farms, roads and towns.

They use a wide variety of habitats: tropical evergreen and deciduous forests, dry thorn forest, grassland, bamboo thickets and scrub. They can climb surprisingly steep terrain and have been recorded above 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in the eastern Himalayas. What they need most is plenty of food plants, shade and permanent fresh water within reach.

Subspecies

Three subspecies are formally recognized:

• Sri Lankan elephant (E. m. maximus), the largest and darkest, with the most extensive pink patches.
• Indian elephant (E. m. indicus), across mainland South and Southeast Asia.
• Sumatran elephant (E. m. sumatranus), the smallest of the three, whose numbers have fallen sharply with forest loss.

The elephants of northern Borneo, mainly in the Malaysian state of Sabah, are sometimes called the Borneo pygmy elephant. They are smaller, with relatively large ears and long tails, and genetic studies suggest they have been isolated from mainland populations for a very long time, but their status as a separate subspecies is still debated.

What do Asian elephants eat?

Asian elephants are herbivores and both graze and browse. They eat grasses, bamboo, leaves, twigs, bark, roots, fruit and crops, and more than a hundred different plant species have been recorded in their diet. Grass makes up much of the diet in the wet season, while bark and woody plants become more important in the dry months.

An adult can eat up to about 150 kg (330 lb) of plant food a day and spends roughly 12–18 hours feeding. Because they digest less than half of what they eat, elephants pass large amounts of seeds in their dung and are important seed dispersers. They drink at least once a day, typically 80–200 liters (21–53 US gal), and rarely stray far from water. They also dig for salt and minerals in the soil.

The trunk does most of the work, tearing up grass, stripping leaves and carrying water to the mouth. See How do elephants use their trunks? for the details.

Herds and behavior

The core of Asian elephant society is a small family group of related females and their young, usually only a few adult cows with calves. These groups are part of a larger, loose social network: families join up and split apart over days and weeks, and bonds between them are generally weaker than in African bush elephants. Older females still matter, since their experience helps the group find food and water.

Young males leave their family at adolescence, usually between about 10 and 15 years old. Adult bulls live alone or in small, temporary bachelor groups and visit female herds to breed. Asian elephants are most active around dawn and dusk and often rest in the shade during the hottest hours.

Elephants communicate with low rumbles, some of them below the range of human hearing, as well as squeaks, chirps, trumpets and snorts. Touch and smell are just as important: they greet each other trunk-to-mouth and read chemical signals in urine and gland secretions. Their large brains and long memories are explored in Do elephants really never forget?.

Musth

Adult bulls go through a yearly period called musth, when testosterone levels rise sharply. A bull in musth secretes a dark fluid from the temporal glands between eye and ear, dribbles urine and becomes restless and aggressive. Musth bulls dominate breeding, and females often prefer them. It is also the most dangerous time to be near a bull, wild or captive.

Reproduction and life cycle

Females can conceive from about 10–15 years old. Pregnancy lasts about 18–22 months, among the longest of any mammal, and usually produces a single calf of around 100 kg (220 lb). The calf can stand within hours and nurses for up to three years, although it begins eating plants within months.

Because of the long pregnancy and nursing period, a female usually gives birth only every four to five years. Other females in the group, especially young ones, help guard and care for calves. Wild Asian elephants live to about 60 years, and a few have reached their 70s or 80s. Elephants in many zoos, by contrast, have historically had much shorter lives than those in the wild or in traditional working camps.

Predators and threats

Healthy adult elephants have almost no natural predators. Tigers occasionally kill calves, especially those separated from their mothers, and in rare cases have killed young or weakened adults.

The main threats come from people:

• Habitat loss and fragmentation. Forests are cleared for farms, plantations, roads, mines and settlements, leaving elephants in small patches cut off from each other.
• Human-elephant conflict. Hemmed-in elephants raid crops and sometimes enter villages. In India, several hundred people are killed by elephants each year, and elephants die from retaliation, electrocution, poisoning and train collisions. Sri Lanka has recorded several hundred elephant deaths a year in recent years.
• Poaching. Bulls are killed for ivory, which has left some populations with very few tuskers. In parts of Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar, elephants are also killed for their skin.
• Capture from the wild. Young elephants have been taken illegally for tourism and logging, especially in Myanmar and Thailand.

Conservation status

The Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1986, because its numbers fell by at least half over three generations, roughly 60–75 years. The population trend is still decreasing. It is listed on CITES Appendix I, which bans international commercial trade.

Conservation work focuses on protecting large reserves and the corridors that link them, reducing conflict with farmers, and stopping poaching. India’s Project Elephant, launched in 1992, has created a network of elephant reserves. Simple deterrents such as early-warning systems, community guard teams and beehive fences help some villages live alongside elephants.

Asian elephants and people

People have lived and worked with Asian elephants for at least 4,000 years. Seals from the Indus Valley civilization show elephants, and the animals later served as war mounts, royal transport and timber haulers. Roughly 15,000 elephants live in captivity today, many still owned privately in Myanmar, Thailand and India.

These working elephants are tamed, not domesticated: most were captured from the wild or born to wild-caught mothers, and they have not been selectively bred like cattle or horses. Their welfare in tourism and logging camps is a growing concern.

The Asian elephant is the national animal of Thailand and Laos and India’s national heritage animal. It is central to Hindu and Buddhist art and festivals, where the elephant-headed god Ganesha is one of the most widely worshipped deities.

Myths and facts

Myth: Asian elephants are just smaller African elephants. They belong to a different genus. Their closest relatives were actually the mammoths, while African elephants form a separate lineage.

Myth: All elephants have big tusks. Most Asian females have none that show, and many males are tuskless too.

Myth: Elephants are afraid of mice. There is no good evidence for this. Asian elephants are, however, wary of honeybees, which researchers use in fences to keep them away from crops.