My animal is an African elephant, the African elephant lives in Africa. The African elephant is the largest and heaviest land mammal in the world, weighing up to seven tons. They also have the longest pregnancy of land animals: two years, and they reproduce sexually. So a cow or a female elephant has about four calves in her lifetime. Newborns or calves can weigh up to 260 pounds at birth and tend to suckle or drink their mother's milk for at least two years. The African elephant tends to live in grasslands, semi-desert, forest and swamps. This way they can have plenty of food around them. The African elephant is a herbivore or an animal that eats only plants. They eat grass, leaves, bamboo, bark and roots. African elephants are also known to eat crops such as bananas, hay and sugar cane, all grown by farmers. They grab food with their trunk and bring it to their mouth which is located under the trunk and tusks. The African elephant eats a lot of food in a day, it can eat up to five hundred pounds of food a day. They also drink a lot in one day, they drink up to 40 liters of water per day. When they are in the dry season of the year and cannot find water in rivers, streams and ponds, they dig in places where there once was water. Elephants form deep family bonds and live in close female family groups or family groups. flock. The pack is led by the eldest and, in most cases, she is the largest female in the pack, called the matriarch. The herds consist of eight to one hundred elephants depending on the surrounding environment and family size. When a calf is born, it is raised and protected by the entire herd. Males leave the herd at around twelve to fifteen years of age and can live alone or with other all-male multiples she...... middle of paper ...... and land to find underground water. The African elephant is in the African species and genus Loxodonta. The African elephant is related to the savannah elephant and the forest elephant. The African elephant is similar to the Asian elephant. One of the most obvious differences between the African elephant and the Asian elephant is that African elephants have large ears while Asians have smaller ears. An African elephant has only four teeth in its mouth. They have four molars, but these are not like our molars, their molars can be the same size as a brick. These molars are positioned two on each side of the mouth for even chewing. When the teeth wear down from all the eating the Elephant has to do to provide energy for his large body, new ones grow to take the place of the old ones. Unlike ours which grow vertically, their teeth grow horizontally.