Asian Elephants

Asian elephants are easily identifiable because of several features:

- they have 2 bumps on the dome of their head
- their ears are smaller than the African elephants'
- their backs have a hill or rounded arch
- they carry their heads higher than their shoulders for the most part
- some Asian elephants have pink splotches on their skin
- their trunk has only one finger on the tip
- quite hairy, especially the babies
- females do not have tusks
- legs are shorter than the African elephant
- males reach up to 10 ft. at the shoulder and females up to 8 1/2 ft. at the shoulder
- males can weigh up to 11,000 lbs.

Asian elephants live in large blocks of forest near water sources and grasslands. They inhabit India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh, and southern China.
Asian elephants inhabit a variety of tropical forest habitats from moist, evergreen lowland forest to dry semi-deciduous teak forests to cooler mountain forests up to 10,000 feet. They like grasslands and farm areas. Their varied diet enables them to live in disturbed forests as long as they have plenty of space to move around to eat different foods without coming into conflict with people.