General Characteristics

Head to body length - 5.5 - 6.4 m ( 18 - 21 feet )

Tail length - 4-5 f t ( 1.2 -1.5 meters )

Height - 2.5 - 3 m ( 8.2 - 9.8 feet )

Weight - 5000 kg ( 11,000lbs )

Ear Size - 60 cm by 30 cm

Description - Head and body length is 550 to 640 cm and shoulder height is 250 to 300 cm. The skin is thick and dry, and the few hairs are stiff. Skin color varies from gray to brown. In contrast to the African elephant, the Asian elephant's ears are much smaller, the back is not as sloping, the head rather than the shoulders is the highest part of the body, the trunk has a single finger-like projection rather than two, and the hind foot has 4 nails rather than 3. The cylindrical feet consist of reduced phalanges resting on a pad of elastic tissue. The cerebral hemisphere is quite convoluted, resembling that of humans and dolphins. The elephant's teeth are unique. They have a limited number of very large teeth that move forward in the mouth as the animal ages; as the front teeth are worn away with use they are replaced from behind. If an elephant lives long enough to have used up all of its teeth it then starves to death. In males, a pair of incisors is elongated (growing 17 cm per year throughout the animal's life) into tusks. Unlike African elephant females, Asian females do not bear tusks.

Range - Asian Elephants live in Indian Subcontinent, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, South China, parts of India, Sumatra  Borneo, south of the Himalayas, throughout Southeast Asia, and in China as far north as the Yangtze River .

Habitat - They live in forest and jungles. 

Diet - It eats  a wide variety of species of vegetation. but  prefer eating leaves, shrubs, grass, consume bark, roots, stems of trees, and vines also.

Status - As late as the turn of the century there were over 100,000 domesticated elephants in Thailand. A great many of them were in the North; in the 1880s there were 20,000 elephants . Today there only about 2,500 domestcated elephants living in northern Thailand.

Reason for the status - People are killing elephants for their ivory  (tusks) , poaching, habitat destruction caused by agriculture and deforestation. 

What type of animal is it - They are herbivores.

Gestation Period - 22 months

Longevity - Life span is about 60-80 years

 Asian Elephant at the San Diego Zoo