LIFE SPAN: 50–70 years. Gestation period is 22 months, and a newborn elephant usually weighs between 175 and 220 pounds. It is suckled by its mother for between two and a half and five years, and reaches puberty between the ages of twelve and fifteen.
FOOD CONSUMPTION: A typical elephant feeds for about 18 hours a day, consuming about 330 pounds of vegetation. Elephants can eat more than 200 different kinds of plant, including grasses, leaves, fruit and bark. On hot days, an elephant will also drink about 50 gallons of water (approximately the contents of the average bathtub).
HABITS: The elephant sleeps only four hours a night, from about 11 P.M. to 3 A.M. In the wild, it can range up to 20 miles in a day. A happy elephant holds its ears out straight.
TRUNK: An elephant’s trunk contains 40,000 muscles (the human body contains 639 in toto). It can hold up to 3 gallons of water.