{"id":809881,"date":"2026-10-22T02:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T02:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/809881\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T02:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T02:20:16","slug":"why-are-elephants-so-darned-huge-and-how-did-they-get-that-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/809881\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are elephants so darned huge \u2013\u00a0and how did they get that way?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing up to three metres tall, weighing up to 6,000 kilograms, with ears the size of satellite dishes and feet the size of saucepans, the African elephant isn\u2019t just big. It\u2019s mammoth<\/a>! The African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) is the biggest living land mammal on Earth, but there have been even larger elephants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), which flourished in Europe and Western Asia around half a million years ago, grew up to four metres tall and weighed up to 13,000 kilograms. While Borson\u2019s mastodon (\u201cMammut\u201d borsoni), which lived millions of years earlier, grew taller and heavier still. Adult males are estimated to have weighed around 16,000 kilograms. All this bulk in a group of animals that feed on plants. So, how did they get to be so big?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trace the elephant\u2019s family tree back to its origins, and you\u2019ll see that they started small. One of the earliest known elephant relatives,\u00a0Eritherium<\/a>, lived in Morocco about 60 million years ago. This trunk-less, pig-like animal stood about 20 centimetres tall. Then the family tree branched and different lineages evolved. Over time, elephants got bigger<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The obliging animals were, it seems, happy to obey Cope\u2019s rule – the idea that animal lineages tend to increase in body size over long periods of time, because the pros outweigh the cons.<\/p>\n

Big animals may need lots of food and a sturdy frame to support their bulk, but their size also brings protection. Taking on a large animal is a risky business, so predators tend to leave the biggest prey alone. Healthy adult elephants<\/a> are rarely killed by predators.<\/p>\n

Adult African elephants<\/a> consume around 300 kilograms of vegetation a day, including grass, twigs, leaves and bark. Much of this food is fibrous and relatively low in nutrients, yet somehow the diet works.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"An African elephants eating in Mana pools, Zimbabwe. Credit: Kitz-travellers\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

One reason for this is that as size increases, each kilogram of an animal\u2019s body becomes cheaper to maintain. A 6,000 kg elephant obviously needs more energy than a 1 kg rabbit, but it doesn\u2019t need 6,000 times more. Its enormous body therefore uses less energy per kilogram, helping make its enormous size sustainable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with their big bodies, elephants<\/a> have evolved big digestive systems<\/a> to process all that food, and big trunks to help them reach it. Their long, sturdy legs can carry them across vast distances in search of food and water, while their enormous ears, packed with blood vessels, act as radiators, helping them shed excess heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, perhaps a better question is, why aren\u2019t today\u2019s elephants<\/a> even bigger? The answer is that there comes a point when the drawbacks of being big outweigh the benefits. Elephant body size hasn\u2019t always increased, either. On islands, where resources are limited, some elephant lineages evolved to become much smaller \u2013 so-called dwarf elephants<\/a>. Natural selection may favour smaller animals when food is scarce, because they need less food to survive. Over generations, this can push body size downwards \u2013 showing that, when it comes to elephants<\/a>, bigger isn\u2019t always better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More wildlife stories from around the world:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standing up to three metres tall, weighing up to 6,000 kilograms, with ears the size of satellite dishes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-809881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}