Elephants perform greeting ceremonies when a member of the group returns after a long time away. The welcoming animals spin around, flap their ears, and trumpet.
The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants, and is as long as three greyhound buses.
The hippopotamus is, next to the elephants, the heaviest of all land mammals. It may weigh as much as 8,000 pounds. It is also a close relative of the pig.
Elephants, lions, and camels roamed Alaska 12,000 years ago.
What do bats' wings, elephants' ears, flamingos' legs, rabbits ears, goats' horns and human skin all have in common? They radiate heat to provide cooling.
Female elephants produce one calf every five years.
Genuine ivory does not only come from elephants. It can come from the tusk of a boar or walrus.
Hippopotamuses have killed more people in Africa than all the lions, elephants, and water buffalo combined, usually by trampling.
In old Siam, white elephants were so rare that they were automatically the property of the emperor. To punish people, the emperor would give them a white elephant because while they had to care for it, it was forbidden to ride or work it.
Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes, and humans all have seven neck vertebra.
Pink Elephants? In regions of India where the soil is red, elephants take on a permanent pink tinge because they regularly spray dust over their bodies to protect themselves against insects.
The blue whale can grow longer than three railroad cars and heavier than 35 elephants -- and has a tongue the size of a compact car.
African elephants have larger bodies, bigger ears, less bumpy foreheads, and longer tusks than Asian elephants.
African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with. However, each tooth is 12 inches long, and their tusks are elongated teeth that grows throughout their lives, like fingernails.
At birth an Asian elephant weighs around 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and an African elephant weighs 581 pounds (264 kilograms). By adulthood both types of elephants will weigh close to 4 tons.
Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks.
Elephants and short tailed shrews get by on only two hours of sleep a day.
Elephants are covered with hair. Although it is not apparent from a distance, at close range, one can discern a thin coat of light hairs covering practically every part of an elephant's body.
Elephants communicate in sound waves below the frequency that humans can hear.
Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die.
Jahangir, a 17th-century ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
Warriors of the Khmer Empire, found in Cambodia from 800-1400 A.D., rode elephants into battle. The sight of the trumpeting elephants caused panic in the enemy's ranks and won the Khmers many battles.
A white dwarf has a mass equal to that of the sun, but a diameter only about that of Earth. A cupful of white dwarf material weighs about 22 tons, the same as five elephants.
Because it is pouring energy out into space so rapidly, The sun is a weight equivalent to a million elephants to a million elephants every second.
| 
