Seeing as how elephants are the largest animals on land, it should come as no surprise to you that their offsprings are pretty big as well.
And when we say pretty big, we mean big. A baby elephant weighs more than an average human being! So let’s get into the reproduction cycle, weight, and other facts about these adorably big babies.
Baby Elephants – An Introduction
Just like baby cows, baby elephants are called calves.
Calves stay very close to their mothers for a long period of time. They cannot see very well at first and rely on their sense of smell, touch, and sound to locate the whereabouts of their mother.
Similar to humans, baby elephants drink their mother’s milk for a period of 2 years, and sometimes even longer.
Unlike human babies though, baby elephants drink about three to four gallons of milk a day!
At about four months old, they also start eating small shrubs and plants, modeling the adult elephants, but continue to rely on their mother’s milk for primary sustenance.
On a more adorable note, baby elephants don’t really understand the purpose of their trunks at first.
They can be seen swinging their trunks back and forth or even sucking on them as human babies do with their thumbs.
At a period of about six to eight months though, they gain understanding and consequently gain control of their trunks and their purpose.
They use it just as their adults do – for picking up plants to eat, and for sucking up water to drink and bathe.
How Much Do Baby Elephants Weigh?
Baby elephants weigh around 250 pounds (114kg) at birth and can grow gradually over a period of 20 years up to a shocking 8,000 – 15,000 lbs! (3628-6803 kg)
The exact weight may vary from species to region to gender and type, and can go from as “small” as 150lbs to as big as 360 lbs!
Baby elephants can grow from their already huge size to even bigger in the blink of an eye!
For example, take a baby elephant welcomed by Tucson in 2020 which weighed about the average weight for baby elephants.
Within nine months it got to a jaw-dropping 900 pounds! Some quick calculations show that that growth is at the rate of 85 pounds per month.
Here are some more baby elephants examples to illustrate just how fascinating their growth and development patterns can be:
The largest baby elephant ever born at the San Diego zoo in the US is a 281-pound baby pachyderm, born in September of 2018.
On the 12th of May, the Houston zoo breaks this record with an even bigger baby elephant. This male Asian baby elephant came into a total of a whopping 368 pounds!
How Much Does A 1-Year-Old Elephant Weigh?
As we mentioned, an elephant at birth can weigh anywhere from 150 to 360 pounds (69kg- 163kg).
Based on this as well as other calculations, the San Diego zoo estimates that during their first year, which is a period of rapid development, a baby elephant can put on about 2 – 3 lbs per day.
With these estimations, we can calculate that an average baby elephant will weigh about 930 – 1395 lbs at one year old. Now that’s one heavy toddler!
How Much Does A Baby Elephant Weigh In Tons?
Since elephants belong to the Class Mammalia, they give birth to fully developed live babies. And so a baby elephant can weigh from 200 to 268 and even 360 pounds, which is about 0.134 to 0.183 tons!
How Much Does An Adult Elephant Weigh?
Seeing the mere size of the baby elephants can give you a pretty good idea of how big adult elephants can get. They aren’t the largest animals on land for no reason!
The largest male elephants can weigh up to 15,000 pounds which equals 6,800 kilograms!
For a point of reference to show you just how iconic that number is, an average adult male human being weighs about 180 pounds. (82 kilograms). Yeah, they are BIG!
What is the weight of a 3-month-old baby elephant?
After a 22-month gestational period inside the mother’s womb, a baby elephant weighs about 200-260 pounds at birth. And by the time the baby elephant grows up to be three months old, it will weigh an average of 400-450 pounds!
What’s The Heaviest Elephant?
The largest elephant on record as of now was an adult male African Savannah elephant whose weight was a mind-boggling 24,000 pounds, which is 10,886 kilograms! And the elephant was as tall as 13 feet at the shoulder!
How Many Pounds Does Elephant Poop Weigh?
Elephants spend the majority of their day, about 16-18 hours a day, eating. Their total daily food intake amounts to about 450kg, consisting of leaves, grasses, barks, and twigs. It would be no surprise then to know that their poop weighs a hefty amount as well.
An adult elephant poops about every couple of hours and their poops weigh 18kg each. Take that amount into a 24-hour calculation and: one adult elephant can poop up to 150kg of poop each day!
In Conclusion
Baby elephants are huge, comparing to many baby animals and mammals in this world.
Yet even with their incredible size, you could miss them walking right behind you – that’s how gentle they are!
Not only are they gentle, but they are affectionate and always remember a friendly face, as shown by countless video compilations of adorable baby and adult elephants on the internet!
Hope you got your answers as well as learned something new about these loveable giants.
Thank you for reading!
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