5 Fun Things to Know About Elephants

Elephants are pretty amazing creatures, and here are five facts you may not know about them.

1. They're pregnant for a really long time.

In fact, elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal, 20-22 months! That's a really long time to be pregnant, but scientists believe it pays off. The babies need the extra time in the womb to let their brains develop so they can understand how to use their trunks, and how to fit into the complicated social structure of their herd after birth.

2. Humans can't hear every noise they make.

I know you'd think that elephants would be pretty loud, and so they are. However sometimes they'll make a sound with a low enough frequency that we humans can't hear it. How do elephants do it? They use the same physical principles as we do to sing or talk, but since their larynx is so large, it produces much lower notes.

3. They drink a LOT.

Elephants drink 20 to 50 gallons a day, that's about as much as you can fit in a standard bathtub. Drinking so much water is also the reason that they can can poop more than double the amount that they eat daily.

4. Males and females live apart.

Elephant herds are made up of females and their young. As soon as male elephants can support themselves without the herds help they "move out", and live on their own or find other males and form a bachelor herd. They only come around the females to breed, and don't stick around to help raise the babies.

5. Elephants have baby teeth too.

Baby elephants have tusks at birth called milk teeth, but they fall out when they're about 2 inches long, that's around a year after birth. At about two to three permanent tusks grow past the lip, and keep growing along the course of the elephants life.

So there you have it, five hopefully interesting facts about one of my favorite animals, the elephant.