Introduction – World Elephant Day is celebrated every year on August 12 to raise awareness about the importance of elephants in our ecosystem and focuses on their protection and preservation across the world. There are many threats including poaching, mistreatment, and habitat loss that are responsible to reduce the number of elephants all over the world. This international day aims to spread awareness among common people about protecting and saving elephants across the world otherwise they will be extinct.

Elephant – It is one of the largest existing land animals with massive bodies, long trunks, and large ears on earth. Elephant uses their trunk to suck up water for bathing or drinking, pick up objects for eating, and many more. There are two types of elephants – Asian elephants and African elephants across the world. The population of African elephants is found in arid deserts and dense forests in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa whereas Asian elephants are found in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka. The life span of both Asian and African elephants is about 60 to 70 years.

Elephants are a very important animal that plays an important role in maintaining the ecosystems for other species. The main aim of this international day is to save or protect elephants that increase the population of elephants and to maintain the biodiversity of rainforests across the world. As per National Geographic, the population of the elephant has rapidly decreased by about 50 percent in the last 75 years across the world.

Important facts about Elephants – There are several amazing facts about elephants are discussed below –

• They are vegan – Elephants can eat only plants that include leaves, roots, fruit, grasses, and many more. They require 160 kg of food every day.
• They can understand or distinguish languages – As per research, elephants exhibit a deep understanding of different human conversations about prey or not. When any elephants heard the voice of any human being, they may likely to act protective smelling the air and grouping together for investigation. Scientists found that elephants also replied with less intensity to female
• They never forget – The memory of elephants is fabulous as compared with other animals. The capability of elephants to recall or remember distant watering holes. They also remember the path of sources of water and food across distant places.
• Teeth of Elephants regrow – As per research, elephants have 26 teeth and the weight of each tooth is about 3kg. African elephants have tusks with long incisors and can grow is about 2 meters. They are polyphyodonty, thus their teeth fall out and regrow several times in their whole life.
• They can hear to their feet – A great sense of hearing and capability in elephants to send vocalizations over long distances. As per research, elephants may detect sounds or communications through the ground through their feet. Elephants have large earbones and sensitive nerve endings in their feet to pick up or listen to these infrasonic messages.
• They cannot live without trunks – Trunks are very important for elephants that are used for eating, cleaning themselves, breathing, smelling and defending themselves so they cannot live without their trunks.