Asian Elephant

Facts

• Habitat: Favors forest edges close to rivers and grassy clearings, moving between shaded woodland and open glades to find fresh growth to browse.

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• Diet: A single adult can browse and graze on more than 100 different plant species, eating roughly a tenth of its own body weight in vegetation every day.

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• Size: A fully grown male can weigh up to 6,000 kilograms and stand as tall as 3 meters at the shoulder.

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• Trait: In much of this species, only some males grow visible tusks; females and many males instead have small tush-like growths that barely peek past the lip.

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• Social Structure: Adult females travel together with their calves and immature offspring in small family groups, while grown males usually wander alone or drift between groups once they reach puberty.

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• Distribution: Its wild range has contracted to a small, fragmented fraction of the territory it covered across Asia only two centuries ago, now confined to scattered forest pockets.

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