What is the African elephant?

African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth. They are
slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by their
larger ears that look somewhat like the continent of Africa. (Asian
elephants have smaller, rounded ears.)

African elephants are a keystone species, meaning they play a critical

role in their ecosystem. Also known as "ecosystem engineers,"
elephants shape their habitat in many ways. During the dry season, they
use their tusks to dig up dry riverbeds and create watering holes many
animals can drink from. Their dung is full of seeds, helping plants
spread across the environment—and it makes pretty good habitat for
dung beetles too! In the forest, their feasting on trees and shrubs
creates pathways for smaller animals to move through, and in the
savanna, they uproot trees and eat saplings, which helps keep the
landscape open for zebras and other plains animals to thrive.

African elephants are sometimes categorized into savanna elephants

and forest elephants. There are some physical and genetic differences,
but scientists are still arguing over whether the differences are big
enough to call them separate species. Currently, most still consider
them same species, Loxodonta africana.

Trunks and tusks

Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool, but
sometimes the African heat is too much. Elephants are fond of water
and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it
all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a
protective coating of dust.

An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose used for smelling, breathing,

trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a
potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 40,000 muscles. African
elephants have two fingerlike features on the end of their trunk that
they can use to grab small items. (Asian elephants have just one.)
Both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are
continuously growing teeth. They use these tusks to dig for food and
water and strip bark from trees. Males, whose tusks tend to be larger
than females’, also use their tusks to battle one another.

Diet
Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these
things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food in a
single day. These hungry animals do not sleep much, and they roam
over great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that
they require to sustain their massive bodies.

African elephants range throughout the savannas of sub-Saharan

Africa and the rainforests of central and West Africa. The
continent’s northernmost elephants are found in Sahel area of Mali. The
small, nomadic herd of Mali elephants migrates in a circular route
through the desert in search of water.

Because elephants eat so much, they’re increasingly coming into contact

with humans. An elephant can destroy an entire season of crops in a
single night—a huge blow to a farmer, who may want to retaliate. There
are a number of conservation programs working with farmers to help
them protect their crops (elephants are so smart that they can learn to
get around electric fences quickly!) and provide compensation when an
elephant does raid them.

Herds
Elephants are matriarchal, meaning they live in female-led groups. The
matriarch is usually the biggest and oldest. She presides over a multi-
generational herd that includes other females, called cows, and their
young. Adult males, called bulls, tend to roam on their own, sometimes
forming smaller, more loosely associated all-male groups.

Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephants have a

longer pregnancy than any other mammal—almost 22 months. Cows
usually give birth to one calf every two to four years. At birth, elephants
already weigh some 200 pounds and stand about three feet tall.

Threats to survival
Poaching for the ivory trade is the biggest threat to African elephants’
survival. Before the Europeans began colonizing Africa, there may have
been as many as 26 million. The arrival of Europeans kicked off the
commercial ivory trend, in which tusks were used for piano keys,
billiards balls, combs, and all kinds of other items. By the early 20th
century, elephant numbers had dropped to 10 million. Hunting
continued to increase. By 1970, their numbers were down to 1.3 million.

Between 1970 and 1990, hunting and poaching put the African elephant
at risk of extinction, reducing its population by another half. Today, the
International Union for Conservation of Nature lists them as vulnerable
to extinction. As few as 400,000 remain today.

Because poachers target elephants for their tusks, these years of

violence have also had an expecting result: African elephants are
evolving to become tuskless. Studies across the continent have shown
that regions with historically higher levels of poaching now have higher
than usual proportions of tuskless females. Researchers are still trying
to figure out how this evolution could affect the species in the long
term.

Though the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species

of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the global commercial ivory
trade in 1989, the illegal tusk trade remains strong, and
poaching continues across the continent. In 2016, the Great Elephant
Census revealed that savanna elephant numbers were declining at a rate
of 8 percent—or 27,000 elephants a year.

Compounding the problem is how long it takes for elephants to

reproduce. With reproduction rates hovering around 5 to 6 percent,
there are simply not enough calves being born to make up for the losses
from poaching.
African elephants are also losing their habitat as the human population
grows and people convert land for agriculture and development.
Elephants need a lot of room to roam, so habitat destruction and
fragmentation not only makes it harder for them to find food, water,
and each other, but it also puts them in increased conflict with
humans—a dangerous prospect for both.

Conservation
African elephants are protected to varying degrees in all the countries of
their geographic range. They’re also protected under international
environmental agreements, CITES and the Convention on the
Conservation of Migratory Species. There have been recent efforts to
bring re-legalize the international trade in ivory, but those so far have
failed.

Conservation groups and governments have worked to set aside land for
wildlife—including corridors that connect those protected lands. Still,
researchers believe that up to 70 percent of elephants' range is on
unprotected land.
To curb poaching, stopping the illegal trade is key. Advocates have
launched campaigns that address both the supply side (poaching) and
the demand side (people who buy ivory). There have been some
breakthroughs in recent years, especially on the demand side: In 2015,
China—believed to be the world’s biggest illegal and legal ivory
market—agreed to a “near-complete” ban on the domestic trade of
ivory. Since the ban went into effect, public demand for ivory seems to
have fallen.
On the supply side, protecting elephants from poaching also requires a
local approach. In 2019, a study showed that the suffering of elephants
is tied to that of the humans living nearby: Regions with high levels of
poverty and corruption are more likely to have higher poaching rates.
This suggests that helping communities develop sustainable livelihoods
could reduce the lure of poaching.