How many species of elephant are there?
There should be no problem, one would think, in classifying an elephant. Certainly all his features are big enough to be noticed, but not everyone agrees about elephant species. While most experts say there are three separate species, a few think there should be only two. The members of a species are alike in their physical features and may be blood kin to each other. The elephant is such an outstanding animal that no one could mistake him for even a distant relative of any other animal. It may seem logical to classify all elephants in one species, but we all know there are marked differences between the African elephant and the Indian elephant. Because of differences in size and trunk, ears and toenails they are classified in two separate species. Many of us have heard of a pygmy elephant, and this fascinating idea calls to mind a miniature version of big jumbo or perhaps the fabulous elephant’s child. Naturally the little fellow merits a species of his own. Most experts classify him
Dear Jamie, That’s an interesting question. For a long time, scientists believed that there were only two species of elephant: Asian elephants (Elephus maximus) and African elephants (Loxodonta Africana). In the past few years, though, new studies have drawn new lines. African elephants were always known to include two different sorts of elephants: forest elephants and savannah elephants. But scientists have discovered that the two types are not as similar as they thought, and so African forest elephants may deserve their own species designation. In addition, the Borneo pygmy elephant has been classified as its own species, with larger ears, a longer tail, and bigger tusks than Asian elephants. That raises the number of elephant species from two to possibly four—a 100% increase just since the year 2000!
one, b) two, c) three, d) four,” don’t select “b;” it’s no longer the right answer. Until now, “b” would have been correct, as anyone who looked up “elephant” in an encyclopedia would have found, because Asian and African elephants were different species, and that was it. Now, however, a new genetic study reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science shows that elephants that live on Africa’s wide-open savannas and those that live in the jungle actually represent two distinct species of African elephant, shattering the long-standing assumption that they were a single species with some differences. That is, the correct answer to the elephant species number question is now “three.
