Forest elephants are an elusive subspecies of African elephants and inhabit the densely wooded rainforests of west and central Africa. ... Forest elephants are smaller than savanna elephants, the other African elephant subspecies.
During peaceful times the ancient kings built their cities using elephants to haul heavy building material, such as granite columns, using low-bed carts. The elephant has been used for hauling logs in forest operations for some hundreds of years, before mechanization of forest harvesting technology.
But there are now around 415,000. Most countries in West Africa count their forest elephants in tens or hundreds, with animals scattered in small blocks of isolated forest.
Once it reaches adulthood, the female and male elephants are known by different terms. A male elephant is called a bull elephant, and a female elephant is a cow.
An elephant's diet typically consists of a variety of jungle plants, fruits, and vegetables. Specifically, they enjoy such delicacies as bamboo shoots and leaves, rice, bananas, sugar cane, corn, tree bark, and jungle leaves. Only 40-50% of the food elephants eat is successfully digested.
Elephant numbers have dropped by 62% over the last decade, and they could be mostly extinct by the end of the next decade. An estimated 100 African elephants are killed each day by poachers seeking ivory, meat and body parts, leaving only 400,000 remaining.
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