THE SUMATRAN ELEPHANT

The Sumatran elephant's habitat is in Sumatra, Indonesia. The average male elephant reaches eight feet high and weighs up to six tons. A baby elephant can weigh up to one ton! The males are always larger than the females. They're bulky and gargantuan. They are massive creatures and docile when they are in the untamed world and even when they are domesticated.

Sumatran elephants have enough strength to knock down a tree. They can also pick up a log using just their trunk and their tusks. A baby elephant is called a calf; the females are called cows.

Elephants have a trunk, two tusks, two eyes, two ears and two lumps on their head. They are known to be clever animals. When an elephant is hot, they fan themselves by flapping their ears back and forth. When an elephant herd wants to move they use their ears as a guide. They can hear infrasonic sounds. Their hearing range is very large. Elephants hear some noises that can not be heard by a human ear.

Sumatran elephants are smaller than the African elephants and so these elephants also have smaller ears. Their eyes are always very watery. They have a very poor sight and depend on their well-developed ears and their sense of smell to aid them in times of need. Their trunk is their nose. They also use it like a hand.

Their trunk has over 40,000 muscles that enables them to move it. Their trunk is the most flexible body part that they have. Just below their trunk they have their tusks. Only male Sumatra elephants have tusks. Elephants are hunted for their tusks and people use it for ivory to make decorative structures.

We need to stop the poaching or else the population of elephants will dissapear at a rapid rate. Soon they will become extinct if we do not help protect them.