Asian Elephant

By Zara

IntroductionThe scientific name for the Asian Elephants is Elephas Maximus.

They are currently endangered, and is fastly decreasing because of deforestation and making room for new buildings etc. They also get hunted down for their tusks to make jewellery out of them and many other things.

Asian Elephants play a big role in countries, like cultures and traditions, but especially in India because they are known to be apart of the weddings and many other services.

Habitat

Their varied diet allows them to live in distributed forests as long as they have plenty of space to move around and eat anything without coming into conflict with people.

They like to live on large blocks of forest near water sources and grasslands, habitat has been greatly reduced in the last half century. They inhabit India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and many others.

In Asian Elephants habitat they always need water to drink and they need a source of food so they can survive and reproduce.

Changing habitats

The Asian Elephant is battling a big loss of their land and their own populations. Large development projects such as roads, mines, industrial complexes, plantations and spreading human settlements has affected the population of them.

Only male elephants are hunted for their tusks (because they are the only ones who have them). The elephants are also taken from the wild for the live elephant trade- primarily going to Thailand for the tourism industry.

Ecosystem The largest land mammal in Asia, the intelligent, highly social animal lives in small groups led by the dominant female. The elephant play a crucial role in its forest ecosystem. They usually stay together on a small pack as you can see in these pictures underneath.

Food chains Food Chain - A food chain is the path by which energy passes from one living thing to another living thing. So a sun produces energy to the grass, then to the caterpillar, to the snake and then to the hawk. But in this case the sun would produce energy to the grass and then to the Asian Elephant, that’s for my organism.

Food WebsFood webs - Several food chains linked together really, instead of one animal it goes off into different and many parts. In my case Asian Elephants eat roots, different types of grasses and bark but there is a big variety of different types of food that the elephants eat.

And so on...

Biome and EcosystemA biome is just many habitats combined into one place or known as a country.

Also a biome is where a place's climate is always staying the same each month, and each biome has many habitats in it. An Ecosystem is the habitat of an organism and survives there, also is apart of a biome.

An Asian Elephants biome is Africa/Asia. Their habitats are made up of sun, grass and water to survive on, and also their family (as in other Elephants.

Elephants aka family.

Sun

Grass

Dichotomous Key

A dichotomous key is when you have a group of anything and basically add yes or no questions then split the group up, into two groups for the first question, then constantly keep going until you can’t separate the animals and there’s only one left.

Here is a variety of animals they are similar apart from the dolphin, but the others are like African animals.

Asian Elephant, Zebra, Cheetah, Lion and a Dolphin.

Do they live on land?Yes No

Asian Elephant, Zebra, Cheetah and Lion.

Dolphin

Do they have fur?Yes No

Asian Elephants

Zebra, Cheetah and Lion.

Do they have hoovesYes No

Zebra Cheetah and Lion

Do they have spots?Yes No

CheetahLion

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Proboscidea

Family: Elephantidae

Genus: Elephas

Species: Elephas maximus

Scientific Name - Elephas maximus

Common names - Elephas maximus - Asian Elephant - Indian Elephant.

Species Profile:Taxonomy

MRS GREN M - yes

R - yes

S - yes

G - yes

R - yes

E - yes

N - yes

Asian Elephants move around when they eat grass, fruit and bark when the are out in the wild surviving. They respire by when they breath 70% through their trunk, the rest is through their mouths.

Their usual respiratory rate is four to 12 breaths per minute. Asian Elephants are sensitive towards their environment, when something is wrong they can sense it very well. They grow from small calfs they grow into adult Elephants.

ClassificationThe classification on Asian Elephants is that they have a backbone so that would classify them as a vertebrate. Because vertebrates have backbones and animals that don’t have backbones are invertebrates.

Classification means to put things into a group and separate things from each other.

ConclusionAsian Elephants are the largest land mammal in Asia, the highly social animal lives in small groups led by the dominant female. Only the male elephants are hunted for their tusks. They are well known in Thailand for their tourism industry. They are currently endangered, and is fastly decreasing because of deforestation. Asian elephants play a big role in countries such as traditions, but especially in India because they are known to be apart of the weddings and many other services.

They are losing a lot of their living land, as where they live the people are killing them so then roads and buildings can be built for the humans. They will live for roughly around 48 years providing they do not get killed, and they get their daily needs.

BibliographyEDGE of Existence. (2016). EDGE of Existence. [online] Available at: http://www.edgeofexistence.org/mammals/species_info.php?id=12 [Accessed 18 Jul. 2016].

Library.sandiegozoo.org. (2016). Asian Elephant Fact Sheet. [online] Available at: http://library.sandiegozoo.org/factsheets/asian_elephant/asian_elephant.htm [Accessed 22 Aug. 2016].

Nationalzoo.si.edu. (2016). Asian Elephants - National Zoo. [online] Available at: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AsianElephants/factasianelephant.cfm [Accessed 13 Jul. 2016].

Nationalzoo.si.edu. (2016). Asian Elephants - National Zoo. [online] Available at: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AsianElephants/factasianelephant.cfm [Accessed 18 Jul. 2016].

Wwf.panda.org. (2016). Asian elephants. [online] Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants [Accessed 21 Jul. 2016].

Wwf.panda.org. (2016). Asian elephants - threats. [online] Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/asianeleph_threats/ [Accessed 18 Jul. 2016].

Feedback -

Positive- you have done very well and is structured very well.

Improve on- you might want to see if you can split the paragraphs into 2, so it looks like less info, but it’s still got all the info.

Positive- another positive would be the way you presented your work, meaning the pictures and info.

From Tiarna Strauss.