How long after mating do elephants produce their young?

Exact knowledge on this subject is not available. Estimates of the period of gestation in elephants range all the way from eighteen to twenty-two months. Dr. William, M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park, says the gestation period in elephants is "about nineteen months, although there are more or less authentic records of twenty-one months." According to Raymond L. Ditmars, curator of mammals at the New York Zoological Park, the period of gestation in the Indian elephant is 641 days, which is considerably more than twenty-one months. There is no evidence to support the belief held by the natives of India and Burma that the gestation period is longer for a male calf than for a female. The scarcity of records is accounted for by two facts. Elephants are very secretive in their breeding habits, and in no country is this species of animal domesticated in the strict sense of the term. The elephants used as beasts of burden in southeastern Asia are maintained under conditions as similar as possible to those of wild animals, and the supply is recruited either by captures from wild herds or by animals born in a semi-wild state. As a rule Indian elephants are tractable, especially if captured young, and they are easily trained for service or show. African elephants are very rarely born in captivity. Indian elephants are not bred in confinement because the process of rearing them from birth to the adult age is slow and expensive and because wild adults captured in the jungle usually soon become gentle and cheerful workers.

How long is the longest elephant tusk on record?

The longest elephant tusk of which there is authentic record is eleven feet five and one-half inches in length, and eighteen inches in circumference at its maximum girth. This tusk and its mate, which is somewhat shorter, weigh together two hundred and ninetytwo pounds. They were taken from an elephant of the Sudan species -Loxodonta oxyotist - which was shot by an American a short distance from the border of Abyssinia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. King Menelik of Abyssinia obtained possession of the pair, which finally, by way of the London ivory market, found their way to the National Collection of Heads and Horns in New York City, where they are now on exhibition. The longest Indian elephant tusk on record is eight feet nine inches in length. Its maximum circumference is seventeen and one-fourth inches and it weighs eighty-one pounds.