• Elephants are the largest of all land animals in the world.
• The life expectancy for female African elephants is approximately 40 years. The oldest known elephant lived to be 82.
• The heaviest elephant in the world weighed 26,000 pounds.
•The word elephant means ivory.
• It is a myth that elephants are afraid of mice.
• Elephants love to swim.
• Elephants are herbivores, meaning they eat plants, not meat.
• They drink a lot of water – up to 15 quarts at once.
• Elephants are not specifically more aggressive than other species, but their size warrants respect and dictates that zoos must follow careful protocols to allow the animals to demonstrate natural behaviors safely.
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• They have an excellent sense of smell and hearing but poor eyesight.
• Generally, one tusk is shorter than the other. That’s the one the elephant uses more often. Just like people are either right or left handed, elephants seem to have a dominant tusk.
• Elephants eat for up to 16 hours a day. They can consume 300 to 600 pounds of food every day.
• Elephants run up to 15 miles per hour with at least one foot always on the ground.
• An elephant's tusks can weigh up to 200 pounds and can grow up to 10 feet long.
• Females tend to have a new baby every three to five years. Twins are extremely rare for elephants.
• At 11 pounds, an elephant's brain is larger than that of any other animal.
• Many elephants in the wild have no tusks. That is because so many with tusks are killed by poachers for the ivory, leaving those without tusks to take care of most of the reproduction.
• One important way to help protect wild elephants is to never buy or sell ivory - regardless of where it comes from.
• Reid Park Zoo has only African elephants on exhibit.