Endangered
Asian elephant
Elephas maximus
While female captive elephants are recorded to have lived beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, Asian elephants die at a much younger age in captivity.
Appearance
The ears are small with dorsal borders folded laterally. Skin colour is usually grey, and may be masked by soil because of dusting and wallowing. It is characterised by its long trunk with a single finger-like process. Large tusks in males; laterally folded large ears and wrinkled grey skin that is partly depigmented on the trunk, ears or neck.
A tusk from an 11 ft (3.4 m) tall elephant killed by Sir Victor Brooke measured 8 ft (2.4 m) in length, and nearly 17 in (43 cm) in circumference, and weighed 90 lb (41 kg).
Published measurements include mass about 95.
Range and habitat
Asian elephants are distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west, to Borneo in the east, and Nepal in the north, to Sumatra in the south. Over this range of habitat types elephants occur from sea level to over 3,000 m (9,800 ft). In Malaysia's northern Johor and Terengganu National Park, two Asian elephants tracked using satellite tracking technology spent most of their time in secondary or "logged-over forest". They travelled 75% of their time in an area less than 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away from a water source.
The project was initiated to protect the Indian elephant and its habitats and to establish dedicated elephant reserves for sustaining elephant populations. Yunnan province has 11 national and regional nature reserves.
Habitat labels include forest.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Bulls are solitary or form temporary "bachelor groups". If both parties are ready to breed, reproductive ritualic behavior occurs and the process of sexual reproduction proceeds.
It is herbivorous, eating about 150 kg (330 lb) of vegetation per day. Cows and calves form groups, while males remain solitary or form "bachelor groups" with other males.
In crisis
While female captive elephants are recorded to have lived beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, Asian elephants die at a much younger age in captivity. Captive populations are declining due to a low birth and high death rate. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as the population has declined by at least 50% over the last three elephant generations, that is about 60–75 years. It is primarily threatened by loss of habitat, habitat degradation, fragmentation and poaching.
The pre-eminent threats to the Asian elephant today are the loss, degradation and fragmentation of its habitat, that leads to increasing conflicts between humans and elephants. Karnataka state in India hosts the most Asian elephants of any known area, comprising around 20% of the total population in the country.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Asian elephant is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Asian elephant, Wikidata item Q133006. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
