If you ask: How many kinds of elephants are there? Most people will answer: two kinds, Asian elephants and African elephants. But in addition to these two, there is a third species, that is, the African forest elephant.
Forest elephants
Elephants are a collective term for species in the genus Object, which is the only extant family of proboscis, divided into two genera and three species. The genus African elephant is divided into African savannah elephant and African forest elephant, referred to as grassland elephant and forest elephant. In addition, the so-called desert elephant is a grassland elephant living in the Namib Desert in southern Africa, which is not even a subspecies, that is, the population of the South African steppe elephant.
When we usually say African elephants, we mean African savannah elephants. Asian elephant genus, also known as elephant genus, has only one species, and is divided into four subspecies: Indian elephant, Ceylon elephant, Sumatran elephant and Borneo elephant.
Gray is a forest elephant and black is a steppe elephant
Originally considered a subspecies of the steppe elephant, the forest elephant was genetically analyzed to have diverged from the steppe elephant 2.5 million years ago, and was listed as an independent species, scientifically known as Loxodonta cyclotis (ScienceNOW, 23 August 2001).
Forest elephants are very similar to steppe elephants, and there are three main differences in appearance.
The steppe elephant on the left and the forest elephant on the right
The first is the size, the grassland elephant is huge and large; the forest elephant is small and strong.
The second is teeth, the grassland elephant teeth bend forward; the forest elephant teeth grow downwards, almost parallel to the front legs, so that it is convenient to walk in the jungle and prevent the leaves and vines from getting entangled.
The third is the ear, the grassland elephant ear is very large, the two ears together are heart-shaped, and some people say that the ears of the grassland elephant are very similar to the map shape of Africa; the upper part of the forest elephant's ear is almost round, there is no edge, so it is also called a round ear elephant.
Originally, all elephants living in the rainforests of central and western Africa were classified as forest elephants, but in recent years, a research team has said that the species of African elephants need to be further divided, that is, there are significant differences in the genetic composition of elephants in the West African rainforest and elephants in the Central African rainforest, that is, whether the elephants in the West African forest are the West African subspecies of the forest elephant or the subspecies of the grassland elephant is still undecided. The current forest elephant mainly refers to the elephant in the rainforest of Central Africa, that is, the elephant in the rainforest from southern Cameroon in the west to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the east.
Forest elephants are the smallest elephants, and are inferior in both average and maximum size to steppe and Asian elephants.
Forest elephant with purple antelope
With regard to the weight of forest elephants, data from very early measurements of forest elephants in the Congo are generally used, with males ranging from 2.8-3.2 tons to females to 2-2.3 tons.
Forest elephants drive Congolese bison
The forest elephant's largest shoulder height, recorded at 9 feet 10 inches, or 2.997 meters, was measured in Api between 1900 and 1926 by Pierre, commander of the Belgian Military Elephant Control Center. The largest weight recorded for forest elephants was 6 tons, and in 1906 a male elephant was shot at Api, its shoulder height was measured at 2.85 meters, and its weight was 6 tons, and its blood and stomach contents were estimated to be 340 kg.
The shoulder height of 2.85 meters and the weight of 6 tons are obviously disproportionate, either because the elephant is too fat or because it is a measurement error. London Zoo once had a prairie elephant named Jumbo, with a shoulder height of 3.23 meters and a weight of 5998 kg. The largest wild female prairie elephant was hunted at Murchison Falls Park on January 16, 1964, with a shoulder height of 2.59 meters and a weight of 3.23 tons. In contrast, this forest elephant is surprisingly fat.
Forest elephants currently number about 60,000-100,000, the specifics are unknown, but they are also threatened by poaching and habitat destruction, as are grassland elephants.