The most dominant feature of elephants’ eyes are their long eyelashes which prevent sand, dirt, or other debris from entering their eyes. Further, elephants have a so-called ‘third eyelid’ which moves across their eyes vertically as opposed to horizontally like the upper and lower eyelids.

This third eyelid is the nictitating membrane and it helps with the lubrication and cleaning of the elephant’s eye. The nictitating membrane draws fluid from a gland in the elephant’s eye called the harderian glad which is responsible for providing the eye with moisture. Occasionally this gland is over-active which may give the impression that the elephant is weeping; despite elephants not having actual tear ducts.

An elephant’s eyes are roughly 3.8cm (1.5in) in diameter. Their vision is moderately strong and elephants are able to determine the shape of an object at about 150m while more detail only becomes visible at 50m. Elephants can perceive colours similar to what a colour-blind person can – shades of beige and green are predominant in their environment.

However, blues and bright colours are more prominent. Despite all the sophistication of the elephants’ eyes, their primary method of orienting themselves is by their incredibly sensitive trunk. In fact, there are reports of entire herds being led by a blind matriarch whose lack of vision did not impair her leadership abilities.

Elephant Trunk

Elephants use their trunks for drinking, eating, cleaning, navigation, playing, and much more. Their trunks are incredibly strong and can lift objects (or unruly calves) that weigh more than 250kg (550lb) as well as store up to 12 litres of water. Their trunks are so vital to the elephants’ survival that severe injury to them would spell almost certain death for the elephant.

As their species evolved, the elephant’s nose and upper lip merged and elongated into their modern trunk. Trunks can be up to two meters long and they can weigh up to 140kg. They are composed of 70 000 to 100 000 different muscles – significantly more than the 639 muscles you would find in an entire human. The trunks are covered in small, stiff, bristle-like hairs which are used to enhance their sensitivity and feeling, much like a cat’s whiskers.

Additionally, the trunks end with a pair of incredibly sensitive tips that the elephants use to feel their way around their environment or pick up objects as small as an acorn with incredible sensitivity. Lastly, an elephant can extend their trunk up to 25% further than its resting length by unfurling the wrinkles in their skin.

Elephant Skin

The elephant’s hide is an incredibly tough, grey, wrinkled skin that covers the entirety of their body. It can be up to 3.8cm thick around the elephant’s neck, abdomen, or legs while being almost paper thing along their grown, eyes, or ears. Their skin is covered with a network of deep wrinkles as well as patches of sparsely distributed, stiff hair. The wrinkles have a two-fold purpose. Firstly, their depth acts as a moisture trap – water will therefore take longer to evaporate. Secondly, they increase the surface area of the skin which means there is more area available for heat to radiate off the elephant.

Similarly, the hairs act as mini ‘radiators’, further increasing the rate at which heat can dissipate from the elephant. The elephant’s skin is therefore another, incredible heat-regulating tool elephants have access to, alongside their ears.

Elephant Ears

Despite only accounting for 1% of their body weight, an elephant’s ears can account for up to 20% of their body surface. This, combined with the density of large veins and constant flapping, means that the elephants can cool the blood in their bodies by as much as 5 degrees Celsius.

Additionally, the size of an elephant’s skull and ears are well adapted to the perception of infrasonic sounds as low as 14Hz – humans are generally able to hear sounds only as low as 20Hz. Unfortunately, this means that higher ranges cannot be perceived by elephants – they are only able to hear sounds as high as 12kHz, compared to humans’ 20kHz. Lower wavelengths are better suited for long-distance communication, which is why elephants often communicate with their characteristic ‘rumble’.

Elephant Teeth

Unlike humans, whose teeth develop at the top and bottom of the jaw, elephants’ teeth develop at the back of the jaw and move forward. When they are born, elephants have a small set of four, developing molars.

They will lose this initial set of teeth once they are two years old.

They will then grow another five sets of teeth throughout their lifetime, with each set lasting longer than the previous.

Each tooth is a wide, flat, molar with diamond-shaped ridges along the surface. These teeth are perfectly adapted for grinding the tough, savannah shrubbery and leaves that sustain the elephant. As each tooth wears out, it eventually crumbles, breaks, and falls out, leaving space to be replaced by the next set.

The final set of teeth usually arrives when an elephant is between 30 and 40 years old.

Elephant Tusks

Elephant tusks are a set of two, elongated teeth that first appear when they are about two years old. They can be found in both male and female elephants, although male tusks are significantly longer and heavier than the females’.

Although their primary use appears to be digging for food or scraping the bark from trees in order to mark their territory, the tusks are often used for social rituals, self-defence, or displays of aggression and superiority – especially in males.

Interestingly, the tusks of desert elephants – such as those found in Namibia – are often more brittle than their savannah or forest counterparts. It is speculated that this is due to the poverty of water or minerals in their natural environment.

Of course, one cannot mention an elephant’s tusks without talking about the global ivory trade. Each year, authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa confiscate several tonnes of ivory. This means hundreds, if not thousands of dead elephants.

The demand for ivory from European, North American, and Asian communities poses a persistent threat to the conservation of African elephants. Consequently, wild elephants have begun exhibiting ‘tusklessness’ more often. Originally only present in a small percentage of the population, the tuskless elephants have become increasingly populous as their counterparts are systematically hunted to extinction.

Elephant Feet

An elephant’s sole has a spongy, fat cushion that acts as a ‘shock absorber’. This allows them to walk over almost any type of terrain without pause or issue as the sole will smooth almost any object it encounters.

This also has the consequence that elephants are incredibly quiet walkers – especially for their size – as this ‘shock absorber’ will muffle most noises, evening the cracking of stones or the snapping of twigs.

Elephants, like cats, dogs, and hyenas are digitigrade in that they walk on their toes, and not their heels. However, an elephant’s heel does not rise off the ground as high as that of cats or dogs, and in that they are more similar to pigs or hippos.

An African elephant has four toes on their front feet and three toes on their hind feet. Further, the desert elephants have larger feet than their savannah or forest cousins. This is likely because they need to travel vast distances – often more than 70km – in search of water, across soft dunes and desert sand.

Elephant Tail

Adult elephants can have tails that are up to 1.5m long, and weigh as much as 11kg. Adults use their tails to guide younger elephants, whereas younger elephants might hold on to an older elephant’s tail in order to follow them.

However, the tail is usually used to swat away flies – a feat that requires as much torque as the engine of a sedan might. Or, in other terms, enough force to knock out a heavyweight boxer.

How big is a desert elephant?

While elephants are undeniably the goliaths of the land, the male elephant far outstrips his female counterpart in this. A male elephant can reach a maximum of eight tonnes in a four-meter-tall frame. This is the rough equivalent of 100 men piled on top of each other.

Elephant cows on the other hand, approach a respectable three tonnes by two-and-a-half meters in comparison. Their calves, which usually weigh about 120kg, and stand less than a meter tall, must think their parents are true giants of the wild. Interestingly, female elephants stop growing once they are about 25 years old whereas males tend to grow for a few years after that still.

How long do elephants live?

Other than humans, elephants are the longest-lived land mammal in the world. They can live up to 70 years in the wild. However, these are the rare exceptions. The average, wild elephant will most likely live to about 56 years, since their species are threatened by hunting, habitat destruction, and human-elephant conflict in agricultural regions.

Despite this, research indicates that wild elephants tend to live a longer, better life than their captive counterparts. Elephants in zoos tend to live but 17 short years.

How smart are elephants?

Elephants are incredibly smart creatures and their brains are thought to be very similar to those of humans. For starters, elephants have incredible memories. Not only do they remember the complicated, long, arduous routes to and from watering holes, feeding grounds, or elephant cemeteries, they are also able to remember and identify individual people.

Speaking of people, research has shown that elephants are able to recognise human body language, understand different human languages, and in one, extraordinary case, even mimic human language. Further, elephants can use and even make rudimentary tools in order to access hard-to-reach food.

Most important of all, however, elephants are deeply emotional creatures that can be seen comforting each other after injury or death – even going so far as to have death and burial rituals for their herd-mates. Elephants sometimes carry the skulls and bones of their loved ones many kilometres to sacred burial grounds.

What is the social structure of elephants?

Male and females usually live in separate, but overlapping worlds which join at the waterhole during feeding or breeding. While neither sex is territorial towards the other, they will each use specific ‘home areas’ throughout the year.

Elephants are a matriarchal society, which means the family units are usually led by the largest and oldest female of the group. Matriarchs are sources of knowledge for the herd, keeping the memories of food and water sources, and providing leadership.

The matriarch decides where the herd moves and when. During conflict or stress situations, the herd tends to cluster around the matriarch, and looks to her for defence or direction. The loss of a matriarch can severely disrupt the harmony of a herd. Her death will be mourned by members of the herd and it may take a long while before a new matriarch emerges to lead the family. These family groups occur in several variations:

· Herds: these are family units between two and 30 elephants in size which include the matriarch, younger cows, and various calves. Herds are defensive family pacts where older cows defend younger cows and calves from non-family elephants and predators. Larger herds are also able to successfully dominate smaller herds, taking their food and water; essential during drought or famine. Desert elephants, however, tend to live in smaller family units of only two or three adults. This results in decreased pressure on resources, in a resource scarce environment.

· Bond Groups: when families grow too large, some daughters or younger cows may decide to split off and form their own families. A bond group is a collection of such families that, while not a single unit anymore, are still connected by blood and memory. They often display elaborate greeting rituals when they meet at water holes, feeding grounds, or cemeteries.

· Clans: families, bond units, and other groupings of elephants that share the same territory during dry seasons.

· Bull Groups: these consist of adolescent and adult males. Male elephants are nudged from their maternal herd after reaching sexual maturity at around 14 years of age. They tend to spend their remaining time mostly alone, although when not in musth (in search for sexual partners), they may form smaller groups with other male elephants in a relaxed and social environment. Dominance in these groups is determined by an elephant’s size and age. During musth, male elephants may leave the group or risk losing their musth in the presence of a more dominant bull. The oldest male elephants tend to reduce their wanderings quite significantly and prefer to remain near easily accessible water and food sources.

Interestingly, research shows that the social structure in the elephants to the North-West of Namibia is more ‘bare-bones’ than those of elephants from other regions. Their social structure is more fluid, lacking the elaborate greeting rituals, behaviours, and social interactions of other herds.

Leadership is also less rigid than in other herds, with some groups not having a clear leader at all. The decline in traditional social structure among these elephants is possibly due to decades-long poaching in the 1970s and 1980s, which severely diminished the numbers of elephants roaming the North-West of Namibia.

Elephant Reproduction

Males have internal testicles; they lack an external scrotum. The elephant cow’s vagina opens downward and looks like a loose skin flap. Elephants have breasts, like humans, and not udders like cows. Their breasts are between their forelimbs on the ‘chest’ of the elephant and are only visible once the elephant has had her first pregnancy, until then male and female elephants look similar.

Females prefer more dominant – older, or stronger – males in musth. Usually this means males that are at least 35 years old that have higher testosterone levels than their counterparts. Bulls that are experiencing musth – an event that typically occurs only once a year – see increases in their testosterone up to 60 times their normal levels.

Often this results in increased aggression, territoriality, fighting, and competition – especially for females. The younger, less dominant males are denied the opportunity to mate by the older, stronger males – a behaviour thought to limit unsustainable population growth. The successful males then begin their search for a receptive female.

Females can start breeding once they reach puberty between 12 and 14 years of age. Much like humans, elephants also endure a menstrual cycle. Each cycle lasts between 13 to 18 weeks and sees a peak about halfway through during which the chance for pregnancy among elephants is highest.

One will often see male elephants in musth guarding the female elephants at the height of their cycle. The start of ovulation is known as estrus or being in heat and sees rapid increases in female sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone.

Once a male has found a receptive female, they begin a protracted game of cat-and-mouse. The female will rub herself against the male and they may even entwine their trunks, before she runs away. The male must give chase and can consider himself successful if the female stands still and allows him to mount her for at least a minute or two.

Once the elephant is pregnant, she can remain so for almost 22 months – that’s nearly two years’ of pregnancy. However, due to the burden of pregnancy and child-rearing, elephants typically wait two to four years between pregnancies.

The calf she gives birth to – elephants rarely give birth to twins – can weigh nearly 120kg. At birth, calves are typically defenceless and do not exhibit the degree of survival, intelligence, or independence that one could expect from other, wild infants.

The calves drink milk for the first two years and are almost wholly dependent on their herd for the first few months of life – much like human infants. However, also like humans, the calves are quick learners and learn new skills by observing their elders.

The desert elephants found in Namibia share a special reproductive burden. They only tend to give birth every seven or eight years, and even then, the calf mortality rate is incredibly high. This is often attributed to the immense scarcity of resources, water, food, or shelter in the desert.

Elephant Communication

Elephants exhibit highly social behaviours that could only be possible through complex systems of communication. Unlike humans, whose communication is mostly visual and auditory, elephants use all of their senses to communicate:

· Acoustic Communication: elephants use their trumpets, mouths, vocal chords, and ears to send and receive information. Their main types of calls are trumpeting via the trunk, rumbling, or a variety of short barks, cries, or snorts. Since elephants often communicate in the infrasound range (as low as 12Hz), their rumbles can be heard up to 10km away.

· Tactile or touch communication: an elephant’s rumble can be felt through the earth by other elephants up to 25km away. Further, elephants are extremely tactile creatures, much like humans. When they meet, they will touch each other all over each other’s bodies by way of greeting. Of course, touching may also convey aggressive, nurturing, or sexual messages in elephants.

· Olfactory and gustatory communication: the incredible sensitivity of the trunk means that elephants often rely on their sense of smell rather than their sight or hearing. The trunk is constantly roaming the environment searching for new smells and can often be used as an indicator of where the elephant’s attention lies. If the trunk is ‘looking’ at something, the elephant is curious as well. They know each other by smell the way we know each other by name. Elephants may also use urine, faeces, or secretions from various glands to communicate with one another. When meeting, they may spend some time tasting each other’s mouths, urine, faeces, mouths, or genitals in order to gain more information about their sex, health, social status, or reproductive phase.

· Visual communication: elephants, like humans, have a complex system of body language that indicates various states of mind such as whether they are relaxed, hurt, mourning, or feeling aggressive. Almost the entirety of their body is used when communicating thusly.