Elephant
- Major Regions: Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Uttara
Pradesh, Orissa, & Assam
- Famous Elephant Reserves: Periyar Widlife Sanctuary,
Bandipur & Nagarhole National Parks
- Other Wildlife Attractions: Tiger, Gaur, Sambar, Chital,
Leopard.
Elephants are the largest living land mammals. At birth it is
common for an elephant calf to weigh 100 kg . It takes 20 to 22 months
for a baby elephant to mature to birth, the longest gestation period of
any land animal. An elephant may live as long as 70 years.
Physical
FeatureThe Asian elephant has been captured, tamed and worked
by people for more than 4,000 years; it triggers the human imagination
like no other animal. An average Indian elephant is anything between 2.4
m to 3 m tall, and weighs anything between 3,600 kg to 5000 kg!
Elephants in general are the largest existing land mammals and they have
the biggest brains in the animal kingdom (weighing 5 kg or 11 lbs).
Their hearts beat 28 times a minute. It also requires about 200 kg of
green fodder, and due to dwindling habitat areas, there has been a
drastic fall in their numbers. They are now an endangered species.
Habitat
& DietsThe Asian elephant is found in the wild in
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Asian elephants are
randomly nomadic in accord with the season. Historically, they travel on
a set course over longer periods that may take them as much as ten years
to complete before arriving back at any one point. However, these travel
patterns have been greatly reduced as fast-growing human populations now
confine most elephants to National Parks because of habitat destruction
and settlement encroachment.
They are found in a wide variety
of forest types, but they tend to avoid large forests of closed
canopies. Their distribution is limited by the need for water (about 100
liters) every day. Elephants are herbivores and spend up to 20 hours a
day eating anywhere from 150 kg to 300 kg of jungle fodder or 6% to 8%
of their body weight in food each day. They prefer feeding on grasses;
however they also eat large amounts of bark, roots and leaves.
Understandably, when elephants come across cultivated crops this food
becomes addicting and as a result leads to human elephant
confrontations. As far as cultivated foods, they seem to prefer rice,
bananas and sugar cane.
