-- ANIMAL FACTS --
THE ELEPHANT


Elephants are the biggest animals that live on land. They can grow to be about as tall as a big yellow school bus. They have huge legs to help support their massive bodies. Each leg is strong enough to support the entire elephant all by itself. But even so, elephants are very slow.  

They also have huge ears. They flap their ears back and fourth to help keep themselves cool and to brush away flies that land on them and bite them. An elephant's ears also help them to frighten away their enemies whenever they hold them straight up.   

Finally, the eleaphant has a huge trunk. An elephant's trunk acts just like an arm. They use it to pick up things, to put food in their mouth, and even to spank their babies. The elephant's trunk isn't an arm though; it's really a nose.   

Elephants live in groups called herds, which can contain between 10 and 100 elephants and are always moving around from place to place following food and water. Once the food or water runs out in one place, they have to move on to somewhere else.    

There are people in Africa and Asia called poachers who hunt elephants for their tusks because the tusks are worth a lot of money. This is illegal.    

There are many elephants in zoos. The people that are running these zoos are hoping that one day poaching will no longer be a problem and these captive elephants will be able to go back out into the wild once again.