Animals in the Wild [119 



ELEPHANTSLARGEST LAND ANIMALS 



Children love elephants. This animal is interesting to 

 observe for many reasons: its huge size, its amazing trunk, its 

 tusks from which ivory is obtained, its status as a living relic of 

 the great mammoths that roamed the earth many ages ago, and its 

 wise, benign expression that reminds us of some distinguished 

 elder statesman. 



Having been told that the elephant is the largest land mammal, 

 a child may be puzzled by its tough, wrinkled skin. 



"I thought all mammals had fur or hair," he may tell you. 

 "But the elephant's a mammal and look at him." 



Indeed, this skeptical attitude is well taken, for adult elephants 

 are almost completely devoid of hair. You have to look closely to 

 see even a bit of it on their hide. A young elephant, however, is 

 covered with a fuzzy coat. Several other beasts, such as the adult 

 rhinoceros and hippopotamus, follow this pattern of being nearly 

 hairless. 



The Elephant's Trunk: Elephants at the zoo are particularly 

 fascinating because we are allowed to feed them and thus see in 

 action the amazing "nose" which serves them as arm, hand, and 

 fingers. The size and muscular strength of an elephant's trunk 

 make it possible for him to carry heavy, bulky objects; the finger- 

 like tabs that project from the end of the trunk enable him to 

 pick up an object as small as a peanut and swing it through a great 

 arc into his mouth. At the end of an African elephant's trunk 

 there are two tabs of about equal length. An Indian elephant has 

 only one tab. 



Elephants of Africa and India can also be distinguished by size. 

 As a rule the African species grow considerably larger than the 

 Indian variety and their ears are much larger. In the jungles of 

 west Africa, however, there are elephants that are an exception 

 to this rule. These elephants are often described as pygmies or 

 dwarfs, as they average considerably less in size than most African 

 elephants. 



