Photo: African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) herd in Kenya
African elephants are species of elephants in the genus Loxodonta of the family Elephantidae. They developed in the middle Pliocene in Africa where they are found in the wild now.
Being larger than Asian elephants, the African elephant males weigh between 5000 kg and 6000 kg (about 10,000 to 13,330 lb), and stand up to 4 meter (13 feet) tall at shoulder level, while the females are much smaller in overall size than the males.
Elephant tusks are their transformed teeth (the second set of incisors) weighing from 23 kg to 45 kg (51 to 99 lb) and can grow up to 2.5 meter (about 8 feet) long. Both male and female African elephants have tusks, in contrast to Asian elephants the females of which do not have tusks. Inside their mouths, elephants have four molars weighing about 5 kg (11 lb) each. Elephants replace their teeth six times in their lives and by 40 to 60 years of age they lose all their teeth with no further growth of teeth, making them vulnerable to starvation and death.
Currently there are two species of African elephants: the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), and the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), the latter previously being considered as a subspecies of the former. The extinct species Loxodonta adaurora is believed to be the ancestor of the modern African elephants. The North African elephant, a subspecies named Loxodonta africana pharaoensis that inhabited the area north of the Sahara from the Atlas Mountains (extending through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to Ethiopia, became extinct some decades after the Roman conquest of North Africa in the 2nd century BC. Two other extinct species are Loxodonta atlantica and Loxodonta exaptata.
Because of commonly occurring interbreeding or natural hybridization among African Elephants, often bush elephants and forest elephants look similar but on closer observation they can be distinguished from one another. The African forest elephant has straighter and downward tusks and rounder ears and they are considerably smaller size than bush elephant that normally has four toenails on the front foot and three toenails on the hind foot. In contrast, the African forest elephant normally has five toenails on the front foot and four toenails on the hind foot like the Asian elephant.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assesses the two species of African elephants as a vulnerable species because of their fast decline in population because of indiscriminate killing of elephants for ivory during the 20th century. In the decade prior to the international ban on ivory trade in 1990, the African elephant population was over 1.3 million which dwindled to around 600,000 by 1990. Despite the governmental protection of elephants, unchecked poaching for illegal ivory trade still devastates elephant populations in many parts of Africa. Often, elephant tusk ivory is illegally traded for arms and ammunition by militants and illegitimate regimes, thereby causing heavy human casualties, political instabilities and huge economic setbacks in some regions.