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In captivity, an elephant can learn to perform a variety of tasks and tricks. Training methods differ. Some training is brutal, with trainers beating the elephant with sharp instruments and eventually breaking its will. Other trainers have tried more gentle methods and have had good results. Elephants are fast learners. A well-trained working elephant may know as many as 40 voice commands.

The life of an elephant

Elephant families. Adult males and females live separately most of the time. The cows and their babies, called calves, live in family units averaging about 10 members each. Families consist of three or four related adult females and their offspring, which range from newborn calves to calves up to about 12 years old. Each family is led by the oldest female, the matriarch. Males leave the family as they become adults. Adult males form loose bonds with other males and only visit the family groups occasionally. A population of elephants is made up of all the family groups and independent adult males that share one area. Populations vary in size from a few hundred elephants to several thousand. Each population ranges over a particular area in search of food. In semidesert areas, elephants may have to travel over vast distances to find food. In areas with high rainfall and abundant vegetation, a population may limit itself to as little as 100 square miles (250 square kilometers).

Wild elephants usually eat for about 16 hours every day. They bathe in lakes and rivers and like to roll in muddy water. After a mud bath, an elephant may cover itself with dirt. The dirt coating helps protect the animal's skin from the sun and insects. Elephants often play by tussling among themselves with their tusks and trunks. Elephants communicate with one another in various ways, including postures, gestures, odors, and, especially, sounds. Elephants make many kinds of rumbling sounds, and each has a different meaning. For example, an elephant calf makes a hoarse, loud rumble when it is frightened, and a mother elephant uses a low, humming rumble to calm her calf. Other sounds made by elephants to communicate include screams, roars, bellows, groans, and squeaks. Food. Elephants eat grass, water plants, and the leaves, roots, bark, branches, and fruit of trees and shrubs. Using their heads as battering rams, they sometimes knock down small trees to reach the highest leaves. An elephant can knock down a tree that measures 30 feet (9 meters) in height and has a diameter of almost 2 feet (61 centimeters). Elephants use their tusks to rip the bark off trees. They also dig up roots and shrubs with their tusks. Elephants especially like bamboo, berries, coconuts, corn, dates, plums, and sugar cane. Elephants do not eat the flesh of other animals. A large adult wild elephant eats about 300 pounds (140 kilograms) of vegetation a day. Wild elephants drink up to 40 gallons (150 liters) of water daily. An elephant can live without water for about three days and may travel as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) to find it. Travel. The padded feet of an elephant enable the animal to walk and run with surprisingly little noise. Elephants normally walk at a speed of 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 kilometers) an hour. When making a long journey, a family walks at about 10 miles (16 kilometers) an hour. An angry or frightened elephant can run more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour, but only for a short distance. An elephant walks and runs with shuffling steps. It cannot jump because of its weight and the structure of its legs. Elephants usually roll in mud or swim at least once a day. They are excellent swimmers and have been known to swim to islands in lakes or off seacoasts. They hold their trunks above water when swimming. Reproduction. Male elephants reach adulthood when they are 10 to 14 years old. But most do not mate until they are over 30 years old. The main reason for this delay is that older males prevent younger males from mating by chasing them away. In addition, females do not usually accept teen-aged males as mates. Females stay in their family and begin mating at an average age of 12. They may have their first calf at age 13 or 14 and usually produce one every four to five years until well into their 50's. The female carries her young for 22 months. She almost always has one calf at a time, but twins occasionally are born. African elephant calves weigh from 255 to 320 pounds (116 to 145 kilograms) at birth and stand about 3 feet (95 centimeters) tall at the shoulder. Newborn Indian elephant calves weigh about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and are about 24/5 feet (85 centimeters) tall.

A baby elephant can walk less than an hour after birth. Its mother stays close to the youngster and protects it for several years. At first, the calf lives chiefly on the mother's milk. The young elephant drinks the milk by curling its trunk over its head so its mouth can reach the mother's breast. When the calf is 3 to 4 months old, it starts to graze on grass and other plant life. Male calves stay with the mother until they are about 14 years of age. Female offspring remain with the mother until she dies. Elephants grow throughout their lifetime. As a result, the older an elephant is, the bigger it is. Males grow more than females, and a large adult male in his 40's is almost twice the size of a female that age. Musth. An elephant has a temporal gland on each side of its head, about midway between the eye and the ear. About once a year, the temporal glands of large adult males swell and discharge a dark, oily substance that has a strong odor. This substance stains the elephant's face. The temporal glands are active for two or three months yearly. During this period, an elephant is in a condition called musth or must (both pronounced muhst). In the wild, musth usually occurs only in adult male elephants over 25 years old.

While in musth, a captive elephant becomes very dangerous if it gets excited. It may attack nearby animals, including people and other elephants. Elephants in captivity must be chained or caged during musth. Zoologists are just beginning to understand the role of musth, which occurs periodically at a time when the elephant's body produces more than the normal amount of a hormone called testosterone. A male in musth has certain advantages over bulls not in musth. Although elephants also mate when not in musth, the musth male is more aggressive and thus able to fight for and guard a female. A female elephant is more likely to mate with a male in musth. Females are ready to mate during a period of sexual excitement called estrus, which lasts about four days at a time. Protection against enemies. The great size of elephants protects them from almost all other animals. Lions in Africa and tigers in Asia can kill elephant calves, but such instances are rare. When under attack, the elephant family forms a circle around the calves to protect them. An elephant may scare an enemy away by sticking its ears straight out and charging. If an animal attacks, an elephant may crush it to death by stepping on it. The greatest enemies of elephants are humans. Until modern times, elephants could often protect themselves from hunters by a group defense. Now whole families of elephants can be gunned down by hunters with automatic weapons. Elephants are easily frightened in areas where they are hunted. A sudden noise, such as a gunshot, can cause a herd to panic. The animals may charge at the source of the noise or stampede away from it. When frightened or excited, elephants sometimes use their trunks to make a loud, shrill cry called trumpeting. Life span. An elephant can live about 65 years. If it does not die from drought or disease or is not killed by hunters, the cause of death will usually be the wearing down of the sixth--and final--set of molars. Once the last set is worn down, the elephant dies of malnutrition. Some people believe that old elephants go to certain places called "elephant graveyards" to die. This belief may have started because sick or aged elephants tend to go to a part of their range where there is shade and soft vegetation. In these places, people have found the bones of many elephants.

Protecting elephants

Elephants are the only survivors of a group of mammals called proboscideans. This group of animals once consisted of more than 350 species, all of which had long snouts or trunks. The earliest known proboscideans lived in Africa and Asia about 50 million years ago. Other proboscideans included the mammoth and the mastodon. Both animals looked much like the elephant.

Today, wildlife experts agree that elephants are in great danger and need human protection to survive. People have destroyed much of the elephant's natural surroundings by clearing land for settlement and farms.

Many African and Asian nations have set aside land to protect the habitats of elephants and other wild animals. This land lies in national parks and in areas called reserves. But some wildlife experts fear that this amount of land is not large enough to save many wild elephants.

Illegal hunting for ivory also threatens the survival of wild elephants. Laws forbid elephant hunting in national parks and in reserves, and they limit the number that sport hunters may kill outside these areas. Sport hunting can usually be controlled, but poachers with automatic weapons can kill thousands of elephants yearly.

The number of African elephants greatly declined in the 1970's and 1980's. Conservation groups worldwide worked to halt the decline. In 1989, all trade in ivory and other elephant products was banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This ban has helped stop the rapid decline of African elephants. In 1997, however, CITES members agreed to allow Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to begin exporting limited amounts of ivory to Japan by 1999.