African bush elephant
The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) is the larger of the two species of African elephant.[2] The bull males can weigh 13000 pounds and stand 13 feet tall at the shoulder.[3]
| African bush elephant | |
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| Loxodonta africana (Blumenbach, 1797) | |
The population of bush elephants has drastically declined in the last thirty years. It is hunted for its ivory and meat. Protection by game wardens has been only partly successful.
This large elephant is well adapted to the grassland plains of East Africa, and it is sometimes called the African savannah elephant.
The African bush elephant occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, and Angola.
It moves between a variety of habitats. These include subtropical and temperate forests, dry and seasonally flooded grasslands and woodlands, wetlands and agricultural land from sea level to mountain slopes. In Mali and Namibia, it also lives at times in desert areas.
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