African elephants - big facts!

There are two species of elephant - the African elephant and the Asiatic elephant. The African is the larger of the two and weigh up to 6 tons.
 
Tembe elephants weigh up to seven tons - the equivalent of 78 adult human males weighing an everage of 90 kilograms each.
 

• Heart and liver: The elephant heart weights 22kg and circulates about 450 litres of blood. Inner "cleaning" is performed by a 77kg liver.
• Water and trunk: To drink it's 9 litres of water at a time, the elephant uses its trunk which weighs 113kgs.
• Tongue: Helping the swallowing process is a 12kg elephant tongue.
• Food and intestines: The approximately 250kg food eaten every day passes through 18m of intestines. Eventually processed into about 100kg of elephant dung per day.
• Digestion: Elephants only digest about 40% of what they eat, and therefore, they need to spend two-thirds of every day eating.
• Gas: An elephant 'releases' 2000 litres of methane gas per day!
• Skin: Its skin weighs 450-750 kg.
• Tail: The tail weighs 11 kgs.
• Fighting: The longest recorded fight between two elephants was recorded at 10 hours and 56 minutes.
• Matriarch: Elephant herds consist of females and the young. A herd is led by a matriarch (grandmother). As young males reached maturity they are chased away by the herd. Bull elephants join the herd for mating.
• Gestation: An elephant's gestation (conception to birth) is 23 months.
• Sound Most of the communication between elephants occurs at an infrasound level.
• Call: It is estimated that an area of fifty square kilometres is filled with particular elephant "call" in infrasound. This might increase to about three hundred square kilometres (the size of Tembe) at dusk due to lower temperatures.
• Eyes: An elephant’s eyes are very small in relation to its head. The eye contains very few photoreceptors and they cannot see very well further than a few hundred feet.
• Speed: A herd ambles at about 4 miles per hour and can charge at more than 25 miles per hour.
• No jumping: Elephants cannot run. They can however walk very fast and climb. They may also jump slightly out of the water to get out.
• Swimming: They can swim considerable distances. In deep water they hold their trunks above the water like periscopes.While getting out of the water elephants may jump a little bit to get out of the water.
• Trunk: An elephant’s trunk is the most versatile of all mammalian creations being used as a nose, arm, hand and multipurpose tool. It is powerful enough to kill a lion with a single swipe, yet the finger-like lobes at the end are adept enough to pluck a feather from the ground.
• Trunk muscles: The trunk is boneless, and is composed of an estimated 40 000 muscles.
• Tusks: Elephant’s tusks are elongated upper incisor teeth, which grow continuously throughout the elephant’s life. They are not always an exact match, as this depends on which side they favour much like left and right-handed humans.
• Ears: An elephant’s ears are covered in veins, which form distinct and unique patterns which can be used to identify individuals - much like human fingerprints. An elephants ears are packed with blood vessels, and when flapped, they quickly lower the animal’s body temperature. This swiftly circulating blood is cooled by about 15 degrees Fahrenheit while in the elephant’s ear.