Sumatran Elaphant

Pair work

Sumatran Elephant

Maria Carvalho e Tomás Costa, 8ºB

Cientific name

Curiosities

Location

Food

Habitat

Population

They are herbivores. It is estimated that they consume around 100 kilos of food and 100 liters of water per day. This amount makes them ecologically important, as they greatly affect the environment in which they live, mainly because they live in large groups.

The skeleton of an elephant constitutes about 13% of its body mass. Larger animals exchange energy with the environment more slowly than smaller species, due to the difference in the surface-volume ratio of the individual. Thus, elephants can easily overheat when active, since they cannot lose heat to the environment quickly. In view of this, they divert large volumes of blood to the ears and shake them, thus releasing heat to the environment and promoting their cooling.Elephants are intelligent animals that have an excellent memory. They are able, for example, to learn to carry out activities they are taught, to remember places, such as immigration routes, and even other individuals who have not seen for years.

Sumatrian location is Indonesia but thei are also found in Africa and in Asia.

Sumatran elaphant has a cientific name of Elephas maximus sumatranus

The animal is protected by an Indonesian law, but it is the victim of the accelerated destruction of its natural habitat: the jungle of the island of Sumatra, in the northwest of the Indonesian archipelago, is increasingly being cleaned to make way for palm plantations or for agricultural areas.

There are 700,000 African elephants left in the world, but only 40,000 Asian elephants in three subspecies. Most of the surviving Asian elephants are of the Indian subspecies, while the Sri Lankan subspecies has only around 6000 elephants still alive, and that is after concerted conservation efforts.