Asian Elephant

About this species

Size

Shoulder height about 2.75m (bulls) and 2.4m (cows); head, body and trunk 5.5–6.5m

Weight

Bulls about 4 tonnes, cows about 2.7 tonnes on average

Diet

Grasses, leaves, bark, fruit and roots; a generalist that both grazes and browses

Habitat

Grassland, evergreen, moist and dry deciduous forest, thorn scrub and farmland edges, from sea level to over 3,000m

The Asian elephant is India's largest land animal. It is smaller than the African bush elephant, with small ears, a highest point on the head rather than the shoulders, and a forehead with two rounded bulges. The trunk ends in a single finger-like tip, so food is usually wrapped and squeezed rather than pinched. Females usually lack tusks, or have small ones that barely show. The grey, wrinkled skin is often coloured by the soil the animals dust themselves with, and pale, depigmented patches are common on the trunk and ears (Wikipedia, general species account).

Across its range the Asian elephant feeds for most of the day, eating up to 150 kg of plants from well over a hundred species, grazing grass in the wet season and browsing more, including bark, in the dry season. It drinks at least once a day, so herds rarely stray far from water. Females and their young travel in small family groups linked into loose, shifting social networks, while adult males live alone or in temporary bachelor groups. Elephants are most active around dawn and dusk (Wikipedia, general species account).

India's first DNA-based count, the Synchronous All India Elephant Estimation 2021–25, identified elephants from dung samples and put the population at 22,446, with a range of 18,255–26,645 (WII 2025, as reported by Mongabay India). The Western Ghats hold the largest share, with Karnataka alone estimated at 6,013, followed by the northeastern hills and Brahmaputra floodplains, led by Assam. The figure uses a different method from the 2017 count of 27,312, so the two cannot be compared directly. Elephants now live in fragmented forest tracts, and corridors between them are a conservation priority.

Description: Wildlife of India guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)