Top 10 Difference between Asian elephant vs African elephants
Asian elephant vs African elephants. There are a lot of physical characteristics that differentiate the Asian elephant and African elephant.
The most noticeable physical difference between the elephants can easily seen in their head and ear shapes also the size of elephants.
Let’s look at physical difference in details.
1. Shape and size of ears
Perhaps an even more obvious way to distinguish an Asian and African elephant from a distance is to look at their ears. African elephants have much larger ears, shaped a little like the African continent. Asian elephants ear are smaller and more semi circular.
2. Shape of the head
Asian and African elephants have distinctly different head shapes, making them easy to tell apart from a distance. African elephants have fuller, more rounded shape of head, and the top of their head is a single dome shape. Asian elephants have twin domed with an indent running up the center of their head.
3. Weight and Size
The African elephants is the large of the two elephants with bulls growing up to 4 meters tall. Biggest Asian male elephant reach no more than 3. Meters. One interesting note on elephant height- the African elephants is tallest at the shoulder, While the Asian elephants tallest point is back.
4. Size of Tusk
Not all elephants have tusks. Both male and female African elephants can have tusks, but only male Asian elephant have tusks. Female Asian elephants have small tusks which is also called as tushes.
As a rule African elephants tusks are bigger than asian elephants tusks.
5. Trunk
As African elephant’s trunk has more visible rings on it, and is not as hard to the touch as the Asian elephants.
The end of their trunks are also very different the African elephant trunk has two distinct fingers which they use to pick up and manipulate things. The Asian elephants has only one finger at the the end of its trunk, which they compensate buy primobolan for by holding things against the underside of their trunk.
6. Lower lip shape
The lower lips of the two elephants differ, though you can really notice this one if you’re close up and the elephant has a raised trunk and open mouth something of an intimidating position to be in.
An African elephants lower lips are short and rounded whereas Asian elephants have long tapered lower lips.
7. Skin texture
The African elephants skin is more wrinkled than Asian elephants.
This is actually due to the African elephants skin having more cracks, that were recently discovered to hold water, helping to keep thee animals cool and preventing dehydration in their dry habitats, the cracks are formed by the outermost layers of skin getting thicker and bending, until the brittle skin layer fractures under the strain.
8. Number of toenails
All elephants have 5 toes on each foot, but not every toe has a nail. The number of toenails varies between the African bush elephants African forest elephants and Asian elephants .
- African forest elephants 5 toenails on the front feet and 4 on the back-feet
- An African bush elephant 4 toes on the front feet and 3 on the back feet
- Asian elephant 5 toes on the front feet and 4 on back feet
9. Number of ribs
The number of ribs an individual elephants has varies from animal to animal, but African elephants tend to have more ribs than the Asian species with up to 21 pairs of ribs vs the Asian elephants average of 20 pairs of ribs.
10. Teeth shape
All elephants teeth are pre molars or molars. African elephant teeth are loadout, a term which gives them their scientific name. Africana loxodonta. In contrast, Asian elephant teeth have a compresses diamond shaped tooth.