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Asian Elephant |
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Elephants live in Asia and Africa. Elephants are slow compared to a Cheetah, but fast compared to a turtle. To keep their large bodies healthy, they eat over 19 hours a day and drink 50 gallons of water. An elephant finds it food by standing their and eating all the plants around it. Since elephants live in groups of 100, you might think that is bad, but it's not because elephants take down whole trees and lets new plants grow. An elephant has few enemies because of its size. A baby weighs 220 pounds, and when it's full grown, it weighs a couple of tons. The only enemy for a baby is a crocodile. When the crocodile is trying to attack the baby elephants, the full grown elephants huddle around the babies until the fight is over. Did you know elephants only get 3 hours of sleep, and they sleep standing up? Some of their body parts are really big . For example,Their brain weighs 8 - 13 pounds and their heart weighs 25 pounds. The elephants skull is like Swiss cheese and its trunk has 5,000 muscles! 35-50 million years ago elephants looked like hippos. Some people think that elephants are really nice and clean. Well, really they are not because they roll around in mud to keep cool and keep the insects off. The elephant is endangered because people are invading the elephants land. Hunters are taking the elephants tusks and leaving the rest of the elephant there. Another reason is because elephants only have 1 baby for a long time and if a hunter kills the baby or a animal kills it then its going to have a problem. In order to protect the elephants, the government has made a laws that forbid hunting. Another thing that is being done is that wildlife people help the elephants so they wont become extinct. |
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