Newborn Asian elephant calves weigh about 90 to 113 kilograms (200 to 250 pounds).īaby African elephants weigh about 91 kilograms (200 pounds) as well. He weighed nearly 11,000 kilograms (24,000 pounds) and was nearly four metres (13 feet) tall. The largest elephant ever recorded was an adult male African savannah elephant.

Adult male Borneo elephants can weigh as little as 2,950 kilograms (6,600 pounds). On the other hand, Borneo elephants are the smallest elephant subspecies. For comparison, an average male human weighs about 82 kilograms (180 pounds). The biggest male African savannah elephants can weigh up to 6,800 kilograms (15,000 pounds). How much does an elephant weigh?Īfrican savannah elephants are the largest elephant species.

The earliest fossil of a modern-day elephant species dates back to 4 million years ago. This species lived during the Paleocene epoch ( between 66 million and 56 million years ago) in Morocco. The oldest known elephant ancestor is a species called Eritherium, which only grew to be about 60 centimetres tall. In Asia, there is one species, the Asian elephant-but this species contains a few subspecies, including the Sri Lankan elephant, Indian elephant, Borneo elephant, and Sumatran elephant. Two species of elephant are native to Africa, the African savannah elephant and the African forest elephant. Elephants originated in Africa and Asia, the only regions where wild elephant populations are found today.

Elephant predators and prey