Elephant
An elephant is a large, plant-eating proboscidean mammal with a muscular trunk, broad ears, and columnar limbs; many have tusks.
Proboscidea: The mammalian order comprising elephants and their extinct relatives, including mammoths and mastodons. Elephants are the only living members of this once-diverse order.
Elephant hearing: The auditory abilities of elephants, including sensitivity to low-frequency sounds and ground-borne vibrations. Low-frequency communication can carry across distances beyond ordinary vocal hearing.
Elephant conservation: Efforts to protect elephant populations, habitats, and ecological roles through research, policy, and management. Habitat loss, poaching, and conflict threaten elephants across their range.
Evolution of proboscideans: The evolutionary history of proboscideans, from early forms to modern elephants and extinct relatives. Elephant traits emerged through a lineage far older and more varied than living species.
Elephant ecosystem engineering: The ways elephants alter habitats through feeding, movement, digging, and other activities that affect other species. Their actions can reshape vegetation, water access, and habitat structure.
Trunk (anatomy): An elephant's elongated, muscular nose and upper lip, used for breathing, smelling, grasping, and sound. Its versatility lets elephants manipulate objects without forelimbs or hands.
Elephant communication: The signals elephants use to exchange information, including vocalizations, touch, posture, and chemical cues. Their social lives depend on signals conveyed through more than sound alone.
Human–elephant conflict: Interactions in which people and elephants harm or threaten one another, often where farms and settlements overlap elephant habitat. Crop damage and risks to people make coexistence a practical challenge.
Mammuthus: An extinct genus of proboscideans that includes the woolly mammoth and other mammoth species. Mammoths are close extinct relatives, not ancestors of modern elephants.
African savanna: A tropical grassland ecosystem in Africa with scattered trees, seasonal rainfall, and large grazing and browsing animals. Savanna elephants influence tree cover and create paths and clearings.