Difference Between African Elephant and Indian Elephant

African Elephant vs Indian Elephant

The majestic and most well-known animals on Earth are elephants. Elephants are of two distinct species, Asian and African. The names are given according to their distributions. The majority of the whole Asian elephant population is consisted of the Indian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus), which is greater than 60%. Number of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) is ten times more than that of the Asian elephants in the world. Despite similar body form and enormous size of these two animals, it is not too difficult to distinguish whether an African or an Asian due to the many differences between them. In the wild all the elephants live in herds and the adult males live solitarily.

African Elephant

African elephant is probably the most widespread elephant, distributed through 37 African nations. There are about 600,000 of them living in the wilds of Africa (Blanc et al., 2003). They are the largest extant land animal on the Earth, weighing between 3 – 6 tons. Females are slightly shorter (2 – 3 metres) and males stand up to 3.5 metres. The ears are large and round those grow above the head height. When an African elephant is viewed laterally, the concave back is clearly visible. The wrinkles of the skin are easily seen. The trunk of the African elephant has two fingers. Most interestingly, both males and females have tusks and they are useful for them to defend themselves as well as to break the barks of trees for feeding. The African elephant population is considered vulnerable for declining by The World Conservation Union (IUCN, 2011).

Indian Elephant

Consisting more than 30,000 out of 50,000 estimated Asian elephants, the Indian subspecies is considered more important to the other subspecies. Most of them are distributed in Southern India (Sukumar, 2006). The Indian elephant usually weighs about 2 – 4 tons and stand between 2 – 3 metres, but the recorded tallest one was 3.4 metres. Only the males have tusks and which is also a smaller percentage of whole Indian male elephants due to ivory poaching. The muscular trunk is the main appliance of the elephants for many things (viz. feeding, drinking, smelling, fighting, loving…etc) and that has only one finger at the tip, in the Indian elephant. The back is not concave and the ears are not very large. The wrinkles on the skin are not very dense and hence they are not predominant. The Indian elephant has great role in the human culture, being a god Ganesh having an elephant face, and also they take part in parades of religious events in India. Somehow, the Indian elephant is categorized as an endangered species due to habitat destruction and slaughtering by humans.

African Elephant vs Indian Elephant

Both animals having similar food habits (herbivorous), migratory herds, social females, solitary males, irresistible caring of the calves make them similar. However, the emphasizing the differences would make the two elephant species more interesting. The African elephant is larger and weigh more. The presence of tusks in both males and females in African elephants is a major difference. Also the tip of the trunk has two fingers in the African elephant whereas in Indian elephant there is only one. The Africans are little more aggressive but when the males are in the musth, there is no one to tame them even if it is an Indian elephant. However, the very long relationship between man and elephant is because of the fascination they add through their intelligence.