Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Proboscidea > Elephantidae > Elephas > Elephas maximus

Elephas maximus (Asiatic Elephant; Asian Elephant)

Synonyms: Elephas asiaticus; Elephas gigas

Wikipedia Abstract

The Asian or Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus) is the only living species of the genus Elephas and is distributed in Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east. Three subspecies are recognised—E. m. maximus from Sri Lanka, the E. m. indicus from mainland Asia, and E. m. sumatranus from the island of Sumatra. Asian elephants are the largest living land animals in Asia.
View Wikipedia Record: Elephas maximus

Infraspecies

Elephas maximus indicus (Indian elephant)
Elephas maximus maximus (Sri Lankan elephant)
Elephas maximus sumatranus (Sumatran elephant)

Endangered Species

Status: Endangered
View IUCN Record: Elephas maximus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
21
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
79
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 42.09
EDGE Score: 5.84
View EDGE Record: Elephas maximus

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  3.503 tons (3,178.00 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  235.896 lbs (107.00 kg)
Male Weight [4]  5.01 tons (4,545.00 kg)
Diet [2]  Herbivore
Diet - Plants [2]  100 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Emoji [3]  elephant
Gestation [1]  1 year 9 months
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  0.2
Maximum Longevity [1]  66 years
Snout to Vent Length [4]  13.645 feet (416 cm)
Speed [5]  15.211 MPH (6.8 m/s)
Weaning [1]  1 year 6 months
Female Maturity [1]  9 years
Male Maturity [1]  9 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Himalaya Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan No
Indo-Burma Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam No
Mountains of Southwest China China, Myanmar No
Sundaland Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand No
Western Ghats and Sri Lanka India, Sri Lanka No

Emblem of

Thailand

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

+ Click for partial list (41)Full list (117)

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Emoji by Twitter is licensed under CC BY 4.0
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size, John R. Hutchinson, Delf Schwerda, Daniel J. Famini, Robert H. I. Dale, Martin S. Fischer and Rodger Kram, The Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 3812-3827 (2006)
♦ 6Ecology of the Asian Elephant in Southern India. II. Feeding Habits and Crop Raiding Patterns, R. Sukumar, Journal of Tropical Ecology Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 33-53
♦ 7"Fig-eating by vertebrate frugivores: a global review", MIKE SHANAHAN, SAMSON SO, STEPHEN G. COMPTON and RICHARD CORLETT, Biol. Rev. (2001), 76, pp. 529–572
♦ 8Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0