Baby elephants playing on the mud

Elephants are large grey animals with big ears, long noses and white tusks. They are the largest living land mammals. The largest elephant recorded was one shot in Angola, 1974. It weighed 27,060 pounds (12.25 tonnes) and stood 13 feet 8 inches (2.16 m) tall.

At birth, an elephant calf may weigh as much as 100 kg (225 pounds). The baby elephant develops for 20 to 22 months inside its mother. No other land animal takes this long to develop before being born.

In the wild, elephants have strong family relationship. Their ways of acting toward other elephants are hard for people to understand. They "talk" to each other with very low sounds. Most elephants sounds are so low, people cannot hear them. But elephants can hear these sounds far away. Elephants have strong, leathery skin to protect themselves.