LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Elephant: Asian Elephant
built 675 days ago
Tara, an Asian elephant, began her life as a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephant. However, she tended to wander off while parading through the different cities visited on tour. This, of course, posed a danger to Tara and the public and she was given to a small municipal zoo in Rhode Island. Once there, Tara was kept in a windowless barn, chained by her ankle, for ten months of the year.
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For someone new to the business of elephant relations, it will be initially only possible to tell which continent an elephant is from by listening for an accent or telltale stereotype mannerisms. As one gains experience, he or she will find that, in fact, they are all quite different. While the Asian and Indian elephants are strictly herbivores, its African relative is a beastly killer who feasts on the weaker African creatures. The American elephant is a different beast entirely, and is actually much more exciting and special than a regular elephant is.
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An elephant's skin is extremely tough around most parts of its body and measures about 2.5 centimetres (1 in) thick. However, the skin around the mouth and inside of the ear is paper thin. Normally, the skin of an Asian is covered with more hair than its African counterpart. This is most noticeable in the young. Asian calves are usually covered with a thick coat of brownish red fuzz. As they get older, this hair darkens and becomes more sparse, but it will always remain on their heads and tails.
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The African elephant's ears are over twice as large as the Asian elephant's and have a different shape, often described as similar to a map of Africa. The nicks, tears and scars as well as different vein patterns on the ears help distinguish between individuals. Elephants use their ears to display, signal or warn when alarmed or angry, they spread the ears, bringing them forward and fully extending them. The ears ... control body temperature. By flapping the ears on hot days, the blood circulates in the ear's numerous veins; the blood returns to the head and body about 9 F cooler.
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Today only three species remain—the savanna elephant and the forest elephant of Africa, and the Asian elephant. Climate fluctuations over the millennia and resulting vegetation changes caused the extinction of many elephant species, but human impact has ... taken its toll. At the turn of the 20th century, elephants numbered from 5 million to 10 million, but widespread hunting and habitat destruction reduced their numbers to 400,000 to 500,000 by the end of the century. Present-day efforts to save elephants may be inadequate, and biologists are unsure if elephants as a species will survive.
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The African elephant and the Asian elephant are the only two surviving species of what was in prehistoric times a diverse and populous group of large mammals. Fossil records suggest that the elephant has some unlikely distant relatives, namely the small, rodentlike hyrax and the ungainly aquatic dugong. They all are thought to have evolved from a common stock related to ungulates. In East Africa many well-preserved fossil remains of earlier elephants have aided scientists in dating the archaeological sites of prehistoric man.
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Asian Elephant