1.5 Euro African bush elephant

(en) The largest land animals on Earth live in the savannahs and tropical forests of Africa. The African elephant can reach up to 7 tonnes in weight, 3 m in height and 7 m in length. Slightly larger than their Asian cousins, the two existing species of African elephants, the savannah and forest elephants, have two curved tusks, large ears and a large, versatile trunk, which they use to sniff, breathe, grasp objects and food or suck water into their mouths.
These huge herbivorous mammals are gregarious and live in matriarchal societies, their only natural enemies, apart from humans, are lions.
Distributed centuries ago over almost the entire African continent, they now live only in scattered and not very extensive areas of Central and West Africa. The savannah is their main habitat, although tropical forests are home to one third of African elephants. They require large areas of territory, given their nomadic nature, which leads them to be in a continuous search for water and food, so they are constantly in conflict with humans, and are increasingly confined to protected natural areas on the African continent.
The elephants' long gestation period and the birth of a single calf at each birth are factors that do not help their proliferation. But it is above all the disappearance of their natural habitat due to agricultural and livestock activity, recreational hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries, and above all poaching for ivory from their tusks, that have brought them to the brink of extinction.