All About Elephants
By: Allyson Moore
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Introduction
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Elephant Parts
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Food for Elephants
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Water for Elephants
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Elephant Families
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The body parts of an elephant all have a job to do. An elephant's trunk is just like your nose because it helps the elephant breathe and smell. An elephant's trunk can also pick things up, reach out like an arm, hold things, rub, scratch, and even throw! Can your nose do that?
An elephant has two tusks as their teeth. Their tusks are made from ivory , just like your teeth. One tusk can weigh up to 220 pounds, which is almost as heavy as a professional football player! An elephant uses it's tusks to dig, rest their trunk, and sometimes fight. Do you write with your left or right hand? Believe it or not, an elephant uses one tusk more than the other!
Since elephants are so big, that means they need to eat a lot more in a day than you do! Elephants eat grass, shrubs , roots, fruit, leaves and even branches. Instead of using a fork to eat like you would, an elephant uses it's trunk to get the food into it's mouth.
Elephants use their trunk like a straw to drink up water that they shoot into their mouths! But that's not all that elephants use water for. They like to take showers by squirting the water on them. Elephants also like to roll around in mud, which actually helps keep them cool. On hot days, elephants even like to take a swim, just like you would do on a summer day!
Though it's not really like your family, an elephant still knows a family is important! The leader of an elephant herd is usually an older female . She and her daughters take care of the babies, while the male elephants usually go off and make their own group. Even though they may separate , an elephant family still keeps in touch with each other by using special sounds that we can't hear. When baby elephants are born, they celebrate, just like human families do! However, elephants spin around, flap their ears, roar, and trumpet with their trunks!
