A Heavy Elephant

Today’s elephant is quite heavy. The material used to create this elephant seems to be a very heavy stone. How heavy are real elephants?

A newborn baby elephant weighs more than the average adult human being. Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal. After almost 22 months growing inside its mother’s womb, female calves weigh 90-100 kg and male calves weigh up to 120 kg.

According to the San Diego zoo, they estimate that baby elephants put on 2-3 lbs per day in their first year. So a one year old toddler elephant will weigh 422-633 kg or 930-1395 lbs.

How heavy is an average elephant? An average Asian elephant weighs 4,000 kg, an average African bush elephant weighs 6,000 kg and an average African forest elephant weighs anywhere from 2,700 kg to 6,000 kg.

A newborn elephant can stand up shortly after being born. On average they are about 1 m high. Baby elephants are nearly blind at birth. They rely on their trunks and their mothers to help them.

Calves will nurse for about four years. The calf curls its trunk over its head which enables its mouth to reach the mother’s milk which is its main diet for the first six months of life. A young elephant will begin grazing on grass and other foliage between the ages of two to six years.

Cows usually give birth to one calf about every two to four years. Elephant twins are very rare. In a BBC news report on January 20, 2022, twin calves were reported born at a national reserve in northern Kenya. The news report said this was a critical time for the calves as the last set of twins born in 2006 had not survived long after birth. Quite often the mother does not have enough milk to feed both calves.

Here is a YouTube link to an interview talking about these new set of twins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJEQP5H93p8

# published author   # living life abundantly