Elephants are an incredible species, being the largest land animals on Earth.
Elephants are gigantic creatures, weighing up to nearly 7 tons. As herbivores, they must eat continuously to sustain their high energy expenditure. Elephants spend up to 16 hours of their 24-hour day eating. An adult elephant consumes about 150 kg of grass, twigs, leaves, fruits, etc., and drinks between 160 and 300 liters of water daily.
Elephants are the largest land animals. The African bush elephant is the largest among elephant species, with males reaching heights of 304–336 cm at the shoulder and weighing between 5.2–6.9 tons; females can stand 247–273 cm tall and weigh between 2.6–3.5 tons.
Elephants have no natural enemies in the wild. Why can we say this? On one hand, in nature, even a newborn elephant can be considered a giant statue. The gestation period for elephants is 22 months, the longest among land animals—more than double that of humans. A newborn elephant weighs around 120 kg, which means it is comparable in size, if not larger than most carnivores in the wild.
On the other hand, elephants are social animals with a strong sense of family, possessing not only their massive bodies but also intelligent minds. Elephant calves are closely protected by their parents and siblings from birth. When a herd is out foraging, drinking, or sleeping, they always keep the newborns at the center of the group.
According to recent independent studies, the elephant genome contains more copies of genes that code for cancer-fighting proteins than the human genome. This results in elephants having a cancer rate of just 4.8%, compared to humans, where the rate ranges from 11% to 25%.
It can be said that for tens of millions of years since elephants appeared, they have never had real natural enemies (their only natural predator is humans).
Research has shown that elephants possess a trait that humans might envy—elephants are almost never affected by cancer!
In the 1970s, Richard Peto, a scientist from the University of Oxford in the UK, pointed out that theoretically, the longer an animal lives and the larger its size, the more cell divisions it undergoes, increasing the likelihood of dying from cancer. However, in reality, the incidence of cancer seems to have little correlation with an animal’s lifespan and body size.
Subsequently, scientists discovered that both humans and animals have a gene called P53, which can repair DNA mutations and suppress cancer, thus it is also known as the tumor suppressor gene.
Elephants are mammals belonging to the family Elephantidae and are the largest land animals today. Three species are currently recognized: African bush elephants, African forest elephants, and Asian elephants.
Humans have only one copy of the P53 gene, and when it malfunctions, humans are very susceptible to cancer. In contrast, elephants have 20 copies of the P53 gene, and even if a few of them are defective, the others can still function normally. Therefore, theoretically, the likelihood of elephants developing cancer is very low. In fact, no elephant has ever been recorded to have died from cancer.
Due to the absence of natural enemies and their lack of cancer, the average lifespan of elephants is quite long, nearly comparable to that of modern humans. In the wild, elephants typically live between 60 to 80 years. In captivity, they can live up to 100 years.
Interestingly, despite their long lifespan, no elephant has ever been known to die of old age naturally.
Elephants usually have 26 teeth: incisors, also known as tusks, 12 premolars, and 12 molars.
And the answer lies in the very teeth of elephants. The teeth we are referring to here do not mean the long tusks but rather the molars in their mouths.
Like humans, elephants also go through a process of losing their baby teeth and growing new ones. At birth, elephants have four molars and baby teeth, which will fall out around the age of two, after which new molars will emerge.
Unlike humans, elephants’ molars are replaced every few years. Throughout an elephant’s life, it will replace its molars a total of six times. The sixth set of molars grows when they are about 30 to 40 years old and will accompany the elephant for the second half of its life.
Unlike most mammals, which grow baby teeth and replace them with a single set of permanent adult teeth, elephants are polyphyodonts and continuously replace their teeth throughout their lives. Their molars will be replaced six times in a typical elephant’s lifetime.
The first five sets of molars have rounded and flat tops, but the sixth set has pointed tops. After the sixth set grows in, if elephants chew on hard foods like bark, nuts, or thorns, their molars will wear down quickly.
When the sixth set of molars is worn down, elephants cannot chew their food anymore, leading to starvation. Thus, in the wild, despite their theoretically long lifespan, they never die of old age naturally; instead, they often die of starvation because their teeth can no longer chew food.
Moreover, elephants possess a special ability—they can predict their impending death. When they sense that their time is short, they quietly leave their herd and go to a secluded place to await their fate. After an elephant dies, it will soon be consumed by predators such as wild dogs, wolves, tigers, leopards, vultures, and hyenas until only bones remain. This may also represent the cycle of rebirth in nature.
