World Elephant Day 2023 | Quiz

On August 12, 2012, the inaugural World Elephant Day was launched to bring attention to the urgent plight of Asian and African elephants. The elephant is loved, revered and respected by people and cultures around the world, yet we balance on the brink of seeing the last of this magnificent creature.

The World Elephant Day, celebrated every year on 12 August, to create awareness about the threats elephants are facing and to ensure their survival.

We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behaviour. – Graydon Carter, Editor of Vanity Fair

The escalation of poaching, habitat loss, human-elephant conflict and mistreatment in captivity are just some of the threats to both African and Asian elephants. Working towards better protection for wild elephants, improving enforcement policies to prevent the illegal poaching and trade of ivory, conserving elephant habitats, better treatment for captive elephants and, when appropriate, reintroducing captive elephants into natural, protected sanctuaries are the goals that numerous elephant conservation organizations are focusing on around the world.

Elephants are simply one more natural resource that is being caught up in human greed on the one hand and human need on the other.  We somehow need people to become reacquainted with nature or they can have no clue as to the interrelatedness of cause and effect. – Dr. Stephen Blake, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology

Here are some interesting facts about the largest land mammal, Elephant;

• The word ‘elephant’ has been derived from the Greek word ‘elephas’, meaning ivory.
• Among all the elephants, African Elephants are the largest. The males can measure up to a height of 3 meters and can weigh up to 6 tonnes.
• Wild Elephants have a lifespan of 60-70 years and attain their majestic height at the age of 35-40 years.
• A newborn calf of an elephant can weigh up to 120 kg.
• The African elephants have comparatively bigger ears and those have the shape of African continent while the Asian elephants’ ears are more like the shape of the Indian subcontinent. The tip of the trunk of African Elephants has two fingers while Asian elephants have only one finger at the tips of their trunk.

• The trunk of an elephant is basically the extension of its nose and upper lip. The trunk comprises over 40,000 muscles that are capable of doing many things such as catching a peanut, peeling it, blowing the shell and then putting it in the mouth. Elephants store up to 8 litres of water in their trunk.
• The tusks of elephants are basically enlarged incisors that help them in many things. The tusks first appear when an elephant turns 2 years old and keeps on growing throughout his/her life. Elephants can use their tusks in feeding, digging the earth and protecting themselves when in danger.
• The average gestation period of any elephant is 22 months. The newborn babies can stand on their own minutes after their birth.

• Elephants are able to locate water and food with the help of their trunk. They use their trunks to smell the food and then put it in their mouths.
• Elephants coat their skin with mud and spend hours sitting in the mud, to protect themselves from sunburn and keep bugs off their bodies.
• Female elephants live in large groups headed by a matriarch. The matriarch is the oldest female elephant in the group and it is always her who decides where and when the group should move for food and shelter. The male elephants leave their groups after they have attained the age of 12-15. They then go on to live with other males or wander independently.

• A normal elephant needs 150 kg food on a daily basis and perhaps therefore, they keep on eating throughout the day.
• Elephants communicate in a variety of ways – including sounds like trumpet calls (some sounds are too low for people to hear), body language, touch and scent. They can also communicate through seismic signals – sounds that create vibrations in the ground – which they may detect through their bones.
• The elephant’s temporal lobe (the area of brain associated with memory) is larger and denser that that of human beings – hence the saying ‘elephants never forget’.