It only eats grass but it swallows it practically non-stop, in fact it is the largest animal on Earth. But how much does an elephant weigh ? A lot, but how much? Let’s go and give some numbers together and take a look at the diet of this animal so massive and at the same time tame, decidedly voracious. In just one day, just to give you an idea, it manages to ingest about 0 20 kilograms of food a day, all vegetal because its diet is strictly vegetarian.
Elephant: species
Before we begin to weigh this animal, we must distinguish two cases that correspond to the two species of elephants that inhabit the Earth and that have very different appearances and also dimensions. I am referring to the Asian elephant and the African one. I will start by saying that the first is the smallest, now let’s find out by how much.
How much does an Asian elephant weigh?
The Asian elephant, also called Indian, has a similar structure to the African elephant that we will get to know later but differs in size and other small characteristics. Let’s start with the shape of the skull that in this species has two prominences and an internal saddle, then small ears emerge compared to the head and a trunk with smooth skin and with a single finger-like appendage on the upper edge.
The Asian elephant’s jaw is equipped with a sort of pendulous and pointed lip that the African does not have. Let’s move on to the body: the back has a convex profile and descends from the withers to the rump, the tusks are small or even absent, at times, in females. We finish with the legs, all four with hooves on the hind foot. We have not yet revealed the weight: it can range from 3,900 to 4,700 kilos . Females are slightly smaller but in general the height varies around 3 meters and the length around 5 and a half meters.
How much does an African elephant weigh?
The African elephant weighs more as it reaches 3.5 meters in height and 6.5 meters in length. It weighs at least 4 tons and can even reach 8 tons , in extreme cases, it usually does not exceed 6 and the females are always “smaller” than the males.
Compared to its Asian cousin, there are some not insignificant differences. The ears are larger and the skull has a different shape, flatter. The trunk at its end shows two finger-like appendages and not just one and the tusks are not at all small in size but can reach up to a meter and a half in length, in males, while in females a little less. Even the back line of these two elephants is different, in the African it is more arched.
How Much Does an Elephant Weigh and Other Curiosities
We have seen how much an entire elephant weighs , but since it is such a large animal, you may be curious to know how much an elephant weighs, piece by piece, without obviously doing any violence to it.
Let’s take a tusk, for example from an African specimen . It could weigh as much as an adult man, so about 90 kilos. And the brain? About 5 kilos, even if it seems absurd to think about it, but it is also a question of proportions.
Returning to think about the elephant in its entirety, let’s find out how much the largest in the world weighs. The Guinness World Record one, found in Angola in 1955, weighed 12 tons . A small elephant obviously already has a considerable weight. When just born it can already weigh around 100 kilos, for a height of around one meter. This is also why the gestation period is incredibly long, lasting 600 days, so just under two years.
How to weigh an elephant
We have reeled off all the data, but where do they come from? Who physically set out to weigh an elephant ? Suggestions on how to do it are welcome, let your imagination run wild but also apply some physical principles and a little bit of cunning. In fact, someone has proposed an interesting solution: put the elephant on a boat and keep track of how much it sinks. Then make it descend by loading a series of bags of stones onto the boat until the boat sinks by the same amount. By weighing the bags of stones, you can deduce the weight of the elephant without having to build a scale to support it.
What does an elephant eat?
Given the weight reached, let’s take a closer look at what diet an elephant follows . We have already said that it is a herbivorous animal and that it ingests about 200 kg of food per day, which means that they are able to deprive entire areas of vegetation. To digest everything they need to drink about 130 liters of water.
In captivity, elephants usually eat cabbage, lettuce, apples and bananas, various vegetables and hay, occasionally acacia leaves, while when in the wild they fill themselves with tree leaves, grass, flowers and fruit but also branches and shrubs or bamboo.
To feed itself when it is free, the elephant must use its trunk, which is not only used to drink but also to take leaves and fruits from the highest branches of trees, as if it were a hand. If they are too high, this greedy animal has no problem and does not give up: it shakes the trees until they fall.