Classroom lesson 路 Wildlife馃嚙馃嚛 Bangladesh

The Asian elephant

Smaller than its African cousin - and clever enough to use tools

An Asian elephant standing in a green forest, with curved tusks and large rounded body

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Asian elephant is one of two main kinds of elephant in the world. It lives in the forests of Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and parts of South-east Asia. Asian elephants are a little smaller than African elephants, with smaller ears - shaped, some say, a bit like the map of India.

Tell me more

An adult Asian elephant weighs about 4,000 kilograms - that's roughly the same as four small cars. They live for around 60 years, which is similar to a human lifetime. Like African elephants, they live in family groups led by the oldest grandma, called the matriarch.

Asian elephants are famously gentle and clever. Scientists have watched them use sticks to scratch themselves, branches to swat flies, and even leaves as little hats to keep the sun off. Some elephants in zoos and sanctuaries have learned to paint pictures by holding a brush in their trunks.

In Bangladesh, wild Asian elephants live mostly in the hilly forests near the eastern and southern border. They walk along ancient routes their families have used for hundreds of years, called 'elephant corridors'. Rangers work hard to keep these routes open so the elephants can move between forests without getting lost.

An elephant's trunk is like a hand, a nose, a snorkel and a hose all in one. It has tens of thousands of muscles inside. Baby elephants spend their first months figuring out how to use theirs - they often trip over it before they get the hang of holding it up.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01If you had a long trunk with thousands of muscles, what is the first thing you would try to do with it?
  2. 02Why might it help an elephant family to remember walking routes their grandmothers used?
  3. 03What other animals have you heard of that use tools? What is similar between them?
Try this

Classroom activity

Find out the average weight of a car. As a class, work out how many of you would have to stand on a giant scale to match one Asian elephant. Then sketch an Asian and African elephant side by side - can you spot all the differences?