40 Fun Facts About Indian Elephants

For several years an Indian elephant calf eats what from its mother to gain bacteria that help digest plants?

Her dung carries nutrients and the gut bacteria a calf needs to break down plants, even though the youngster starts on solid food at about six months.

The Elephant Whisperers, a 2022 film about a couple raising orphaned Indian elephant calf Raghu, won which prize?

An Oscar for best documentary short went to the film in 2023, a first for India in that category; its crew spent almost five years living beside the keepers.

Which Indian leader sent an elephant named Indira to a Tokyo zoo in 1949 after Japanese children wrote asking for one?

Jawaharlal Nehru named the elephant after his daughter, the future prime minister Indira Gandhi, and she lived at the zoo until 1983.

Which activity can take up as many as 19 hours of an Indian elephant's day?

Foraging fills most of the day because an adult gets through up to 150 kg of leaves, grass, bark and fruit every 24 hours.

Which animal is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, often shown riding as his mount?

A mouse is the unlikely mount of so heavy a god, and Hindus revere the Indian elephant itself as one of his forms.

At about 22 months, the Indian elephant has the longest what of any land animal?

Pregnancy lasts close to two years, and the single calf that arrives can weigh well over 100 kg and stand soon after birth.

In a famous parable from ancient India, men with which condition quarrel over what an elephant is like?

Blindness is the point of the story: one man feels the trunk and thinks of a snake, another feels the tail and thinks of a rope, and each is sure he is right.

Which country, whose flag once showed a white elephant on a red field, has the Indian elephant as its national animal?

Thailand flew a white elephant on red from 1855, when King Mongkut decided a plain red flag was not distinct enough for dealings with other nations.

The Indian elephant survives in Nepal and Bhutan but is regionally extinct in which other country on India's border?

Pakistan has lost its wild elephants, while India alone has nearly three-quarters of all the Indian elephants left in the wild.

Which members of an Indian elephant herd are pushed to leave once they reach puberty, between the ages of 8 and 13?

Young males drift away to roam alone or in loose bands, while females stay with the family herd for life.

Some Asian forest trees depend on giant plant-eaters such as Indian elephants to carry what for them?

Seeds travel a long way inside an elephant, and in Asian forests the largest ones depend on giant plant-eaters such as elephants and rhinos to move them.

About how much does an average bull Indian elephant, standing 2.75 metres at the shoulder, weigh?

4,000 kg is typical for a bull, well above a cow's 2,700 kg, and the very largest bulls reach about 5,400 kg.

Which part of an Indian elephant, an animal with a convex or level back, is the highest point of its body?

The head tops the whole animal, capped by two rounded bulges that sit above a concave forehead.

Which French naturalist gave the Indian elephant the scientific name Elephas indicus in 1798?

Georges Cuvier described an elephant from India 40 years after Linnaeus named the species from a Ceylon animal; only in 1940 was the Indian form ranked as a subspecies.

Which Indonesian island has its own critically endangered subspecies of Asian elephant, a cousin of the Indian elephant?

Sumatra has its own subspecies, uprated to critically endangered in 2011 after losing at least 80% of its numbers in three generations.

Queen Maya is said to have dreamed of a white elephant entering her side before giving birth to which religious teacher?

The Buddha was said to have taken the shape of a white elephant, a lotus held in its trunk, to be reborn among people one last time.

In the Hindu legend of Gajendra Moksha, which god comes down to free an elephant from the jaws of a crocodile?

Vishnu answers the prayer of the elephant king, who had been seized by the leg while picking lotus flowers at a lake.

Which Hindu goddess is often shown flanked by two elephants that shower her with water from their trunks?

Lakshmi takes the name Gajalakshmi in this form, and her two elephants are often read as symbols of the rain clouds that make the land fertile.

In Hindu cosmology, what job do four mythical elephants standing at the compass points do from the netherworld?

Hold up the Earth is the task the Ramayana gives to four named elephants, one for each direction, while eight others stand guard over the zones of the universe.

Colonists from which country named Elephanta Island, near Mumbai, after elephant statues they found at its cave temples?

Portugal's colonists called the island Elefante; its rock-cut cave temples, mostly dedicated to Shiva, are now a World Heritage Site.

Which Indian emperor handed 500 war elephants to Alexander's successor Seleucus as part of a peace treaty?

Chandragupta Maurya gained Seleucus's easternmost provinces in the deal, and his elephants went on to help Seleucus win the Battle of Ipsus.

Which Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, kept thousands of elephants in his imperial stables?

Akbar ruled an empire founded in 1526 by Babur, whose own ancestor Timur had fought and captured the war elephants of Delhi.

Which Indian city's Dasara festival ends with the Jumbo Savari, where an elephant carries a goddess on a golden howdah?

Mysore's lead elephant bears the goddess Chamundeshwari in a howdah of some 750 kg, and the animals rehearse the march for about a month beforehand.

At which Indian temple festival do two facing lines of 15 elephants compete in swapping brightly coloured parasols?

Thrissur Pooram calls the parasol contest Kudamattam, and its elephants wear nettipattam, golden ornaments that cover the forehead.

Which Rajasthan city's Elephant Festival once featured painted elephants in polo, races and a tug of war against people?

Jaipur's owners decked their elephants in saddle cloths, jewellery and anklets that tinkled, and the best-dressed animal was named the winner.

Which Indian state hosts the Sonepur fair, whose Haathi Bazaar once lined up decorated elephants for sale?

Bihar stages the fair each year at the full moon of Kartik, but trading elephants there has been prohibited since 2004.

Hastividyarnava, an illustrated manual on elephant care made for the Ahom king Siva Singha, is from which Indian state?

Assam's best-known illustrated manuscript sorts elephants into types and explains which ones suit a king, how to train them and how to keep them healthy.

What was the name of the stockade trap once used in India to capture a whole herd of wild elephants?

Khedda drives used riders on tame elephants to push a herd into the stockade; one princely state staged 36 of them before the method was outlawed as cruel.

What name, from a Persian word for aid, is given in India to trained elephants used to calm and herd wild ones?

Kumkis keep some of their wild, dominant character on purpose, so that they can control a wild elephant by force if they have to.

What is the hooked elephant goad called that counts among Hinduism's eight auspicious objects?

Ankusha goads first appeared in India around the 6th century BC, and two perfectly preserved ancient examples were dug up at Taxila.

What are the small tusks of a female Indian elephant called, which barely show unless her mouth is open?

Tushes are all most cows ever grow, so ivory poaching falls on bulls: at one Indian reserve it left a single adult bull for every 122 cows.

Which Bollywood star played an orphan who performs in the street with four elephants in 1971's Haathi Mere Saathi?

Rajesh Khanna made the film at the peak of his fame, and it became the highest-grossing Indian film of 1971.

Which Rudyard Kipling collection includes 'Toomai of the Elephants', the tale of a young elephant handler?

The Jungle Book reprinted the magazine tale in 1894, and in 1937 it reached cinemas as Elephant Boy, with Sabu in the lead.

Gaja, the root of names such as Gajendra, is the word for elephant in which classical language of India?

Sanskrit also lies behind the English word mahout, which arrived by way of Hindi from the older term mahamatra.

An Indian elephant wears through six sets of which teeth in a lifetime, each new set pushing in from the back?

Molars move forward like a conveyor belt; the last set arrives in an elephant's early forties and has to serve for the rest of its life.

India's 1992 programme to protect Indian elephants and their corridors followed which earlier wildlife scheme of 1973?

Project Tiger began with nine reserves; its counterpart, Project Elephant, funds the states to protect herds, their habitat and their migration routes.

Which hazard, a major threat alongside poaching, killed an estimated 461 elephants in India between 2009 and 2017?

Electrocution strikes when elephants brush against electric poles and transformers as farms and villages spread into their range.

Which southern Indian state is home to more wild elephants than any other state in the country?

Karnataka counts the Indian elephant as its state animal, an honour the animal also enjoys in Jharkhand and Odisha.

What name is given to the periodic state in which a bull Indian elephant turns aggressive as his testosterone surges?

Musth is marked by fluid seeping from glands on the temples, yet a bull is unlikely to father a calf before his thirties, crowded out by older, larger rivals.

In mela shikar, a traditional method in northeastern India, a rider on a trained elephant catches a wild one with what?

A lasso thrown from elephant-back is the heart of the method, which has also been practised in Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.