It’s practically impossible to talk about large animals on land without mentioning the literal elephant in the room: elephants themselves. After all, they’re only the largest animals in land, or at least, that’s what their African versions are.
Their Asian counterparts are slightly smaller than them when you get right down to exact measurements, but in general, it probably doesn’t matter too much when you consider that both of them are still gigantic hulking beings that could probably crush you under their feet if they so desired.
But this also begs the question: Are they dangerous to humans?
Elephant characteristics
The first thing one might notice about an elephant is its elongated trunk, which, fun fact, is actually its nose. Yup, it is a very flexible long nose that fulfills the actions of a regular nose such as breathing and smelling. However, thanks to its length, it can do more things such as drinking, trumpeting, and even grabbing objects.
Next are its ears. Here, the two known species of elephants differ slightly, as African elephants have much larger ears and seemingly resemble the shape of the African continent. In comparison, Asian elephants have smaller and rounder ears.
Next, we look at the tusks. Elephant tusks actually evolved from their teeth and have many uses. Digging, lifting objects, and even defending against potential threats are just some of the things that an elephant’s tusks can do. What about size? African males and females as well as Asian male elephants have their tusks grow quite large, but Asian female elephants and some male elephants have much smaller tusks. In fact, sometimes, they don’t even grow outside the mouth. These mini-tusks are instead referred to as “tushes”.
Finally, there’s their lumbering size. African elephants, being the much larger one of the two, can grow to a towering size of somewhere between 8.2 and 13 feet tall at the shoulder. Meanwhile, they can weigh somewhere between 5,000 to 14,000 pounds in mass.
In comparison, Asian elephants grow to between 6.6 and 9.8 feet tall at the shoulder, while weighing somewhere between 4,500 and 11,000 pounds.
As for their habitat, African elephants can be found in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the rainforests of Central and West Africa and the Sahel desert in Mali. For Asian elephants on the other hand, they can be found in Nepal, Southeast Asia, and India, in dry or wet forests and grasslands.
Threat posed to humans
Elephants are herbivorous, which means that they will only choose to consume leafy greens in their diet. Does this mean that elephants are actually gentle giants?
Well, it’s a little more complicated. See, elephants are generally quite peaceful. If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone as well, and like any other animal, they can get quite aggressive if they’re sick, injured, or harassed by someone or something. Female elephants may be aggressive to perceived threats to their young as well.
All of this is well and all, but a major issue that causes conflicts between humans and elephants are the fact that human settlements overlap with elephant habitats. As a result, this leads to elephants raiding crops made by humans while potentially killing people in their way. An estimated 100 people are killed per year during these raids in India alone.
When an elephant perceives a threat or a challenge, it may show dominance by showing off its superior strength and social position. Spreading their ears, standing tall, raising their head and tusks, they attempt to show that they are not an animal that a predator, an opposing elephant, or even a human wants to deal with. They may even shake their head and trunks.
Elephants may also charge at perceived threats. They may be faking it, or they may have full intentions of goring or trampling you underneath it. You will never really know unless an elephant breaks off mid-charge. If it doesn’t, it’s probably charging to kill, and for an unarmed human in the middle of its path, you won’t stand a chance against nature’s version of a bullet train. What’s worse: Unless you’re standing on uneven terrain like a hill, the elephant will easily catch up to you if it is aiming for you.
And of course, the number of potential ways that an elephant can kill you is just as huge as its size, but the most common ones involve simply crushing you under its huge body or goring you with its tusks. But for some elephants that are unable to reach their targets, they can get creative. They wrap their trunks around an object and heave it towards their target! And no, this is not a joke, it has actually happened and ended up killing someone as a result.
Wrapping up
As mentioned earlier, elephants earlier are very much peaceful creatures and would prefer to be left alone. In fact, even though elephants kill humans during crop raids, elephants themselves also suffer severe losses, with as many as 50 dying per year during crop raids. This doesn’t even go into detail about how elephants are hunted and poached for their ivory.
They are only really dangerous because humans are placing settlements and living right next to them, which means that there is a conflict of land between humans and elephants. Otherwise, they are mostly docile.
But on the other hand, you still don’t ever want to piss an elephant off. After all, its size and strength are nothing to ever joke about, considering how it has practically every advantage available against an unarmed human to catch and kill.