- Elephas maximus
Identification
- The Asian elephant is smaller than the African elephant and has the highest body point on the head.
- The back is convex or level. The ears are small with dorsal borders folded laterally.
- The feet have more nail-like structures than those of African elephants—five on each forefoot, and four on each hind foot.
Distribution
The species occurs in :
- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, in South Asia.
- Cambodia, China, Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sumatra), Lao PDR, Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah), Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam in South-east Asia.
- Feral populations occur on some of the Andaman Islands (India).
Taxonomy
A definitive subspecific classification awaits a detailed
range-wide morphometric and genetic study.
While subspecies taxonomy of Elephas maximus has varied among authors, the most recent treatment recognizes three subspecies:
- E. m. indicus on the Asian mainland
- E. m. maximus on Sri Lanka
- E. m. sumatranus on the Indonesian island of Sumatra
- Borneo's elephants have traditionally been included in E. m. indicus or E. m. sumatranus.
Habitat
- They occur in grassland, tropical evergreen forest,
semi-evergreen forest, moist deciduous forest, dry deciduous forested and dry thorn forest, in addition to cultivated and secondary forests and scrub-lands.
- Over this range of habitat types elephants are seen
from sea level to over 3,000 m asl. In the Eastern Himalaya in northeast India, they regularly move up above 3,000 m asl in summer at a few sites
Behaviour
References
- J. Shoshani and J. F. Eisenberg. 1982. Elephas maximus. Mammalian Species 182:1-8
[J. Alroy/J. Alroy/J. Alroy]
- Sukumar 2003
J Mammal (2004) 85 (3): 581-582
- https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/85/3/581/902447/Sukumar-R-2003-The-Living-Elephants-Evolutionary
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.01860.x/abstract
- Shoshani, J; Eisenberg, J. F. (1982). "Elephas maximus" (PDF). Mammalian Species. 182 (182): 1–8. doi:10.2307/3504045. JSTOR 3504045.
- Wikipedia
External Links