10 surprising things about elephants

1. Elephants can distinguish different human ethnic groups by listening to their voices.

Scientists have found that elephants are capable of discriminating between ethnic groups from their voices and languages. Herds would respond to recordings of voices from groups that on occasion attack them by bunching together defensively. However, recordings of groups who do not attack elephants did not create a strong response.

The elephants could also distinguish the age and sex of individuals from within the same group. They responded less defensively to the voices of women and young boys, who pose less of a threat, than those of the men in the group.

2. It is very rare for female elephants to give birth to twins.

A female elephant, known as a cow, typically produces a single calf. It is very rare for elephants to give birth to twins, happening in only around 0.5% of pregnancies. They have the longest gestation period of any land mammal – as long as 22 months!

3. An elephant’s trunk contains more muscles than there are in the entire human body.

An elephant’s trunk contains over 40,000 muscles, made up of around 150,000 muscles units. This is more than there are in the entire human body, which contains only 639 muscles.

4. Elephants' tusks are for life and cannot regrow.

Unlike deer antlers, which are shed every year after the mating season, elephants' tusks are actually a pair of elongated teeth which continue growing throughout their life. If they lose one, like with our adult teeth, they have lost it for life. One of the heaviest tusks ever recorded weighed more than 100kg.

5. Elephant families are led by dominant females.

Elephant societies are led by the oldest female of the group, the matriarch. Adult males are usually solitary. The matriarch acts as a store of knowledge which is passed down from generation to generation. The herd relies on her to make key decisions on where to find food and water as well as which herds are friends and which are foe.

6. Elephants may be left- or right-“handed”.

Similar to humans, elephants may be “left- or right-handed”, meaning there is a preference to use one tusk over the other. As a result, one tusk may become more worn than the other.

7. Elephants can hear through their feet.

Elephants’ feet have special sensory cells, called pacinian corpuscles, which enable them to detect vibrations of other elephants rumble calls through the ground.

8. Elephants DO NOT drink by sucking water through their trunk like a straw.

The elephant’s trunk is an extension of the upper lip and nose. Elephants use their trunks to collect water, sucking it part way up the trunk, which they then pour into their mouths. Initially, elephants have very little control of their trunks so they drink water using their mouth; sucking water with the trunk starts at around four months of age.

9. Elephants help the plants that they eat.

African elephants have been found to disperse the seeds around 335 different species of plants in their dung. Some species of plants can only germinate if they have first passed through the digestive system of an elephant.

10. Female elephants live long after they are no longer able to breed.

Female elephants have a long post-reproductive phase, similar to human menopause. They can live for decades after the birth of their last calf, something that intrigued scientists for many years. It is now known that older females act as knowledge stores and help the herd make important decisions. Scientists have discovered that herds rely on the wisdom of older matriarchs to make their decisions have better success in raising calves.