Elephas maximus
| Elephas maximus | |
|---|---|
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| |
| Conservation status | endangered (EN) |
| Family | Elephantidae |
| Genus | Elephas |
| Binomial name | Elephas maximus |
Elephas maximus is a species of mammal in the family Elephantidae.[1]
Description
Adults weigh around 2.9 tonnes. Mammals have hair and the females feed their young with milk. They are warm-blooded and have a four-chambered heart. Most of them give birth to live young rather than laying eggs. Mammal groups are separated by teeth, skull structure and DNA. Teeth are especially useful because they wear in patterns that match what an animal eats, and they survive well as fossils, which lets living groups be linked to extinct ones. It is grouped with other members of Elephas inside the family Elephantidae.
Where it lives
Records place it in only one kind of habitat. It has been recorded between about -6° and 31° latitude. An individual uses an area of about 38 square kilometres. Where it is common, about 0.53 individuals are found per square kilometre.[2] Where exactly it lives is not fully known. Like most species in its family, it is tied to the particular kind of habitat it is adapted to, and it is not found everywhere inside that range. Surveys in nearby areas may still add new sites. Ranges are drawn from museum specimens and from field surveys, so the true extent may be wider than the records show, especially in places few people survey. Within any range the animal is not spread evenly: it is tied to the particular conditions it is adapted to, and where those conditions have been broken into separate patches, groups can become cut off from one another.
Food
This species is a herbivore — its food is plants. Almost all of what it eats is leaves, grass and other plant parts — about 100% of the diet. It is active at any time of day or night.[3]
| Food | Share |
|---|---|
| leaves, grass and other plant parts | ██████████ 100% |
Mammals are warm-blooded and need to eat regularly to keep their body temperature up. How much they need rises in cold weather and while feeding young, so the time spent searching for food changes with the season.
Reproduction
Females normally give birth to about 1.4 young at a time. Young develop for about 1.7 years before birth. The young are fed on milk for roughly 7 months. Individuals have been recorded living up to about 80 years.[3] The young are born live and are fed on milk by the mother until they can find food for themselves. How long they stay with her varies widely between species, and during that time they usually also learn where and how to find food — which is why young mammals raised apart from adults often struggle. The details for this species have not been fully described.
Conservation
This species is endangered on the IUCN Red List. Loss and change of habitat are the usual reasons species like this become rarer. More survey work would be needed to say how its numbers are changing.[4]
Classification
The full scientific classification of Elephas maximus is shown below. Scientists sort living things into a series of groups, from the very broad down to the single species, so that related kinds are kept together.
| Rank | Name |
|---|---|
| Kingdom | Animalia |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Mammalia |
| Order | Proboscidea |
| Family | Elephantidae |
| Genus | Elephas |
| Species | Elephas maximus |
References
- ↑ Catalogue of Life
- ↑ Jones, K.E. et al. (2009). PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant mammals. Ecology 90:2648. [1]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wilman, H. et al. (2014). EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027. [2]
- ↑ IUCN Red List