African elephants are the largest mammals that live on land. They grow all their lives.
Male African elephants weigh up to 14,000 pounds. They are thirteen feet tall if they are
measured from the ground to the top of their shoulders.
African elephants have ears that can be five feet long and are shaped like the continent of
Africa. Elephants can flap their ears. The big ears help to keep the elephants cool.
Elephants eat all day long. They eat grass, leaves and other plants. They also eat fruits like
bananas. Elephants use their trunks to grab food and put in their mouth. They can also
suck water into their trunks and squirt it into their mouths. Elephants can drink up to forty
gallons of water a day!
They use their trunks to pick up and to hold things. They can pick up something as tiny as
a marble or as a big as a tree. They also breathe through their trunks. Elephants have two
tusks, which are made of ivory. These tusks grow on both sides of their trunks. Elephants
can use their tusks to fight and to dig. People used to hunt elephants because of their
valuable tusks. Ivory was used to make beautiful jewellery and statues. It is against the
law to hunt elephants now because hunting has made them endangered animals.
A. Answer the following questions on the basis of your reading of the passage.
1. How much does a male African elephant weigh?
2. Write two facts about an African elephant’s ears.
3. What does an African elephant eat?
4. How much water can elephants drink in a day?
5. How did African elephants become endangered animals?
Answers
Answer:
1.
African elephants are the largest of all land animals, adult males weighing between 1,800 and 6,300 kg (2 and 7 tons/ 4,000 and 14,000 lb.). Females are smaller, weighing between 2,700 and 3,600 kg (3 and 4 tons/ 6,000 and 8,000 lb.).
2.You can tell the two species apart by their ears. There are two species of elephant: African and Asian. The ears of African elephants are much larger than their cousins and are described as being shaped like the African continent, whereas the ears of Asian elephants are shaped like. Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark, and they eat a lot of these things. An adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food in a single day.
3.
Explanation:
4.Elephants can drink up to 50 gallons of water every day! This amount of water is equivalent to the size of a bathtub.
5.African elephant populations have fallen from an estimated 12 million a century ago to some 400,000. ... Today, the greatest threat to African elephants is wildlife crime, primarily poaching for the illegal ivory trade, while the greatest threat to Asian elephants is habitat loss, which results in human-elephant conflict.