The forest elephant has a longer, more narrow jawline and rounder ears. The toenails are different in number, with five on the front foot and four on the hind feet. The tusks are much smaller, straighter, and point downward. With the savannah elephant, they have four toenails on the front feet and three on the hind feet. Their tusks are prodominantly longer and curve upward.

They have four molars. When the front molars wear down and fall out in pieces, the back molars shift to the front and then a new set of molars replace the one’s that shifted. This process happens six times, after that, the elephant no longer have teeth. Once the last shift happens and those front teeth chip away, the elephant no longer has molars, dying of starvation between the ages of 40-60 years of age, a typical cause of death for the elephant.

The tusks are the second set of incisors that grow thoughout their entire lifetime and serve many purposes. For survival purposes, they are used to ward off predators that may threaten them as well as for acquiring food. They’ll eat anthing that is green, but their diet consists of grass, leaves, bamboo, bark, and roots. They use the tusks to dig roots and remove the bark away from the trees for food. They are also known to eat farmer’s banana and sugarcane crops as well. Tusks weigh between 50 -100 pounds and range between 5-8 feet long. Adult elephants eat between 300-400 pounds per day, but with an inadequate digestive system, the African elephant only digests about 40 percent of what it eats. To prove their manhood, the tusks are used to fight off potential mates for the female elephant during mating season, which occurs mostly during the rainy season.

They have an acute sense of hearing, which gives them long-range communication. Their ears are used to control body temperature by flapping, which can also double for helping with the blood circulation.

Their skin is both brown and gray in color with one inch folds in certain places, that is very sensitive to sun and insect bites. They roll in the dirt and mud to protect their skin from these intrusive elements.

Like the human species, elephants form strong family bonds and live in tight female oriented family groups called herds. The matriarch of the herd is commonly portrayed as the largest, and sometimes, the oldest of the female elephants. Depending on the size of the family and their surroundings, herds can number little as eight or as many as 100 individual elephants. When a calf is born, it is protected by the whole female herd, while the male will leave the family for approximately 12-15 years to live in solitare or with other male elephants on a temporary basis.

While poaching is still an issue, the government has stepped in to protect the survival of this animal from poachers who kill the elephant for their tusks. At the turn of the 20th century, the estimated population of African elephants ranged into a few million, today the number of elephants has significantly decreased to an estimated 400,000-700,000 elephants.