For Carola and Ellis Chase steadfast friends for more than four decades and reliable sources of love laughter and good food LP In memory of my brother Ralph who knew how to live life to the fullest He will be missed MH The author and illustrator would like to thank Cynthia Moss director of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and the longest running elephant research project in the world for her careful review of the text and illustrations
Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine that you are an elephant Wow If you ever wanted to be taller now you are You tower over those humans down there Now feel your big ears They cover your shoulders You can move them a lot and even flap them in the air to cool yourself on a hot day Best of all is your amazing nose It is a muscular trunk long enough to reach your toes Use it to squirt water lift logs or grab fruit from trees high overhead You can even use the tip of your nose trunk to turn the page and learn more about extraordinary elephants
Back is rounded bulging upward Ears are big but less than half the size of African savanna elephants Forehead seen from the front has a double dome Asian elephants are smaller than African savanna elephants but they are still very big A male Asian elephant called a bull can grow to be nine feet tall and weigh 9,500 pounds Its body can measure twenty six feet long Asian elephants live in Southern and Southeast Asia including India Cambodia Thailand and Malaysia Tusks grow in most Asian males not in females Trunk has a tip with one lobe or finger For many years people believed that there were two kinds or species of elephants one in Asia one in Africa Scientists knew that populations of African elephants differed in some ways but still believed they were all one species Then in 2010 came surprising news New evidence from the study of genetics revealed that African elephants were two separate species One African species lives mostly in open savanna habitat grassland studded with bushes and trees This species is called the savanna or bush elephant The other the forest elephant lives mostly in dense forests These two African species along with the one Asian species are shown on these pages 4
Ears are the biggest of all animals Back is flat or bows downward Forehead seen from the front has a single dome Trunk has two lobes or fingers on the tip Tusks are long curved and light colored African savanna elephants are the biggest of all land animals A bull can grow to be twelve feet tall and thirty feet long It can weigh as much as 15,000 pounds A female cow is smaller but can still weigh up to 7,000 pounds The savanna species lives in eastern and southern Africa and parts of western Africa Forehead seen from the front has a single dome Ears are about half the size of the savanna elephant's ears Back is flat or bows downward Skin color is darkest of all elephants Tusks are brown and point downward African forest elephants are the smallest of the three species They weigh about half as much as savanna elephants and live in the rainforests of central and western Africa Trunk has two lobes or fingers on the tip 5
