The African Elephant (Loxodonta africana): the largest, most powerful, and yet most gentle land mammal.

1. Size: The male African elephant can reach a height of ten feet tall (to its shoulders), and can weight up to six tons. The female is a bit smaller and can weigh up to four tons.

2. Lifestyle of the African Elephant: elephants live together in families with one of the female elephants as the herd's leader. The male elephants live solitary lives. When an elephant wants to communicate with another elephant, the elephant makes a rumbling noise from its throat. When it gets angry, it makes a loud trumpeting sound.

3. What do Elephants Eat: Elephants are herbivores, and eat grass, foliage, fruit, branches, and twigs. Elephants can eat up to 500 pounds of vegetation in a single day and drink as much as 40 gallons of water at one time.

4. Where do Elephants Live? African elephants live all throughout Africa, south of the Sahara. Their cousins, the Asian elephants, are smaller and live in Asia.

5. How many Elephants are there? The African elephant is an endangered species. In the African country of Kenya, in the last ten years or so, the elephant population has dropped by 80 percent, from 150,000 down to 30,000. This decrease in elephant population is mostly the fault of poachers (people who illegally hunt elephants) who kill the elephants to sell the ivory of their tusks.

6. Miscellany: The elephant uses its big ears to fan itself, and its trunk is used for breathing, smelling, for picking up food, drinking, and even for giving itself a bath -- the elephant can fill its trunk with water and then spray it back on itself. When elephants cannot find water, during the dry season, they will dig in the sandy bed of a dry river to find water.