Is an elephant a mammal?
Yes, the elephant is a mammal – I know you’ve got other good answers that say so, but I wanted to clarify that the characters that define mammals are not what a lot of people think. All mammals: – have hair (at least during some point in their lives, sometimes only before they’re born like the whales and dolphins) – have the lower jaw formed by a single bone – have 3 ossicles (small bones) in the middle ear (anvil, hammer and stirrup) – have mammary glands that produce milk that feeds the young (nipples are not a requierement – the platypus and the echidnas don’t have any!) There are other features that are typical of mammals, but being warm-blooded, or delivering live young, having four limbs or breathing with lungs, are NOT characteristics that define mammals.
