Elephants

A detailed Summary of Elephants

This paper is on design and ancestry of elephants.

The elephant was created on the fifth day of creation and since then has been able to exist in every one of earth's vegetation and climate zones (Groning, 1999).

The taming of the elephant was first achieved in the valley of the Indus River, where around 3500 BC the first highly advanced Oriental civilization began to emerge. There is much uncertainty however on whether the first to tame the elephant were settled farmers or forest hunting people (Groning, 1999).

At this time these enormous creatures were considered as sacred beings and mystical symbols by many natural religions and cults. The elephant was tamed and trained but never domesticated and even in captivity remained a wild animal (Groning, 1999).

The oldest depiction of tame elephants are small seals found during excavations in the Indus River Valley and what today is Pakistan. The seals were found in the ruined city of Mohenjo-Daro and were usually found carved in soft steatite. Evidence that they were tame is found in that they were often drawn by feeding troughs or carrying saddle-blankets (Groning, 1999).

Elephants are very complex and magnificent animals whose design is complete evidence of a supernatural and super intelligent God.

Elephants probably lived in the forests by the Yellow River during the Bronze Age and seem to have been tamed and used as a work animal during the Shang dynasty. The figure of elephants appears in many relief decorations on early ritual bronzes and also in some three-dimensional representations from the Shang dynasty (Groning, 1999).

The Asian elephant (Elephus maximus) has an angular head with a steep forehead, an arched back, small ears, and fairly smooth skin, which is often freckled looking. Its trunk also has a "finger" on the end. The Asian elephant grows to an average shoulder height of eight to ten feet at most and an average weight of three to four tons (Groning, 1999).

Elephants have very poor digestive systems, which causes them to eat 330 to 375 pounds of food each day and drinks 18 to 40 gallons of water each day. Digestion takes 22 to 46 hours and only about 40 percent of what it eats is digested the rest remains undigested and is secreted (Groning, 1999).

The elephant has a huge head with a bone structure that gives it great stability. It also has a firm anchorage, which is needed to support trunk, tusks, and neck muscles. The skull however is a lot less heavy than it looks and is not made of solid bone but rather of cavities, which provide the necessary skull volume without a lot of weight allowing it to move rather freely. Inside the elephants skull is the largest brain of any land mammal. The brain is also convoluted like the human brain. Elephants also have an excellent long-term memory and with dolphins are definitely the most intelligent animals (Groning, 1999).<

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Approximate Word count = 1174
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science