I am currently studying to be a veterinarian, with a major of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences. So I have always cared a lot about animals. Growing up I would hear about all these wonderful and beautiful animals being endangered. I never understood how a person could intentionally kill an animal that was already at risk of extinction. I choose to write about a different endangered species each week because I want to expand my knowledge of the many animal species in the world, even though I can never see myself caring for these unique creatures.
Asian elephants, also known by its scientific name, elephas maaximus indicus many only have around 25,600 to 32,750 individuals of its species left. They are only found in Indian, Sri Lankan, Borneo pygmy, and Sumatran. To give a mental picture, they are 6.5 to 11.5 feet in height, around 11,000 pounds in weight, about 21 feet in length, and live primarily in forests.

Although there are thousands of domesticated Asian Elephants in Southeast Asia, they are constantly threatened with extinction due to the growing human population moving in to the elephants shrinking habitats. These gigantic animals are fascinating, although a little smaller than the African Elephant, they developed good hearing, vision, olfaction, and are found to be good swimmers. Who knew elephants would need to swim!
These creatures are actually extremely sociable with other of its kind, making group of 6 to 7 females lead by the oldest female. She is known as the ‘matriarch’. These smaller groups can then find other groups to form herds of elephants. When Asian Elephants are just born, they can stand up fairly quickly but will stay under the careful watch of their mother for 4 more years. They will not reach their full size until 17 years but become sexually mature at the early age of 9. This still seems very young, and that is why makes do not usually participate in sexual activity until they are 14-15 years old. These elephants eat grass for about two thirds of their day and the other third eating whatever else they can find from rice to bananas and sugarcane. These herds will also always stay close to a fresh water source because they need to drink at least once a day.

The sad part is, that it has been estimated the Asian Elephant population has decreased by at least 50% in the last 60-75 years! What’s going to happen in this next cycle of years? The human population has been moving into the elephant’s habitats of the forest and about 20% of the human population live in a close range of the species. As humans are taking over their homes, we are dwindling their numbers and severely cutting down their chances of survival. Elephant-human conflicts are large when they only have a limited habitat space to live. This results in the elephants raiding villages and the humans than in turn killing the animal.
All elephants are known for their large hides ivory tusks which has led to a dangerous amount of poaching for ivory and meat. Even with laws in place, the hunting of the Asian Elephant continues and has become a big conservation problem.
These elephants are such amazing creatures that we as humans do not seem to appreciate. Instead of hunting and killing them, we should work to save these animals. Being a very endangered species, it’s only a matter of time until the population decreases to nothing. This is why we need to work together to increase their land space and stop as much illegal hunting and trade as possible before it’s too late. How could we lose such cute and amazing animals?

https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/asian-elephant
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/