We are all familiar with the elephants, but if you ever looked into them before the 2000s, you would learn that there was only two different elephant species alive. However, during the last few decades this belief has slowly changed, and the general consensus is that there are currently three different species - two in Africa and one in Asia.
Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). Image by Mohan Raj, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is the only one that is found in Asia, and has three different subspecies (one for Sri Lanka, one for Sumatra, and one for mainland Asia such as China, India and more). This is the only elephant in the genus Elephas, and all the other members of this genus has died out a long time ago.
The other two species of elephants are found in Africa, and this is where the debate has been going. Up until recently it was believed that there was only one species in Africa, but most scientists have now agreed to separate them into the African bush elephant / African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana), and the African forest elephant (L. cyclotis).
An African forest elephant (L. cyclotis) mother with a calf. Image by Thomas Breuer, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
Not everyone has recognized the two African elephant species
The problem with finding out that there are actually two species of elephant is that not everyone accepted the discovery. There are still some groups, including government groups, that do not want to separate them into two different species, and rather treats them as two subspecies.
While this might not mean much to most of us, it can have huge implications on the conservation efforts for the elephants. While the African savannah elephant is only considered Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List, the African forest elephant is most likely very close to reaching dangerously low levels of the population. It has not yet gotten an assessment by the IUCN Red List, so the official status is not declared, but no one doubts that it is highly threatened.
A male African bush elephant. Image by Bernard DUPONT, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
This means that being its own species could potentially increase the funding and protection for the African forest elephant, which it sorely need!
How genetics separates the African elephant species
In 2017, a group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany did a study about the genetics of the elephants, and they found out that the African forest elephant is more closely related to the extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) than it is to the bush/savannah elephant. This really shook up the commonly accepted knowledge about the elephants, and scientists had to reevaluate a lot of the knowledge they had about elephant taxonomy.
To summarize it very quickly; the two African elephants were much more distantly related than anyone had anticipated, and they had in fact been two separate species since they separated from each other 2 - 7 million years ago.
More recently, a new study has looked closer at the genes from 14 different elephants; 6 from living elephant species and 8 from extinct elephants, mammoths and mastodons in order to get a bigger picture of how the elephant species are related to each other.
A Wooly mammoth (left) and an American mastodon (right) – two of the species that were used to compare the genome of the elephants against. Image by Dantheman9758 at the English language Wikipedia, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
This new paper is pretty much confirming what scientists have believed recently; that there are three different extant species of elephants. Hopefully this new evidence will be enough to persuade even the rest of the people who claims that the African elephants are the same species once and for all!
The research paper also points out something really interesting regarding gene flow, and that is that most of these closely related animals have interbred at one point. The two extant African elephants are fully able to interbreed, which is why many people want them to be classified as one species, but genetic results show that they are more than unique enough to be two different species.
In addition to this, the paper goes a long way to increase the knowledge of elephant phylogeny, the study of how the different species are evolutionary related to each other. It it obviously a very difficult task to learn much about this due to the fact that we only have a few remaining elephant species, while most are extinct a long time ago, and therefore usually only gives us fragmented DNA to work with.
Thanks for reading
I hope we can all agree that there are three living elephant species by now! Anyway, thanks for checking out the post. I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even learned something new about the taxonomy of elephants.
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Great news that instead of two species of human most friendly animal there exist three species. The condition is still not good due to brutal killings of innocent elephants for ivory. It's time to make some serious efforts for the conservation of innocent elephants by developing new parks and awareness to people. @valth you shared that China and Hong Kong is imposing ban on elephants trade. Hopefully it will help to minimize elephant killing. Let's hope for the best
Yes, I believe that this is a very important step in making sure the elephants don't go extinct. There is not real reason to kill them anymore if people stop buying ivory.
Thanks!
Interesting post and you present a convincing theory for us to consider the number of elephant species to be three and not two as previously thought. I did a dissertation on elephant vocalisations twenty-odd years ago. They're remarkable animals, aren't they?
I think when it comes to defining what constitutes separate species and what doesn't, there'll always be a bit of a minefield. Take lions and tigers, for example. Traditionally, one definition went something like: a species is a group of organisms that can mate to produce fertile offspring whilst not being able to with any other group. But ligers and tigons can also breed. And then, closer to home, what about humans who can't? Who are infertile?
Maybe nature is too big to pigeon-holed and maybe it shouldn't be. Within a species, it's like there's one great continuum (at least in the big cat example above). Where do you draw the line? Maybe it's the fact that we typically look at life at the species / individual level. If we look at the genetic level, there will be further exceptions to our definitions, no doubt.
Thanks for posting. It was an interesting read. And I'm sure we'll forever stick to the traditional methods of classifying animals as they're no doubt the most convenient methods. :)
Yeah, you are absolutely onto something here. The debate about what is a species and what is not is really heated, and it's changing all the time. Most modern species are determined more by genetics than the class "whom can have children with whom" definition that used to be common back in the days.
What I believe is that we will never get a clear definition of what a species is. In nature, everything is as you say a continuum, and we humans want to categorize everything, which is impossible to do with nature. Really, what we're trying to do is to categorize all life on earth, so of course it will be next to impossible to make it nice and easy.
Thanks for leaving a great comment, @zool237! I'm sorry I didn't get to reply to your earlier.
Best regards from @valth
I have a question to ask...
Can we clone some endangered species,if we have enough resources??
What's the status of cloning in the context of conservation efforts???
Good question, @xabi.
We should be able to do it in theory, but real life is different from theory. There two things we need in order to clone a species:
Finding a good host womb can be difficult. While it is not that difficult to artificially impregnate humans, the exact method is a bit different in all animals, which is why there is no easy way to do this. Scientists who are trying to clone the woolly mammoth has the DNA they need, but their problem is that it is really difficult to impregnate an elephant with the sperm.
So the status right now is that it's next to impossible, but I believe that this will be something that scientists will keep exploring, and will someday become viable.
Hm..So the problem is the womb...
So I am sure that the scientists have collected and preserved the ample DNA samples of endangered species...for in future if the technology advances to a level to surpass the host womb difficulty, they may become able to recreate the lost species...
I am sure they must be working tirelessly to do so, as this kind of advancement will be a breakthrough....
Yes, of course genetic study of elephants could confirm that there are three species alive, instead of two, but there is a bigger issue than that. Extinction. We have many more threatened species every year, so the situation is out of control. I would certainly say that groups are in continuing decline. In fact, many species are declining in large numbers and many are stepping fast towards extinction. One of the main reason could be deforestation and trophy hunting. So you could stop hunting and that would be good, and there would be a transition to a positive effect or no more decline because of hunting. But even if you stop hunting, still they keep cutting the forest, then the species population will go down again. There has to be so much done to prevent elephant and all other species extinctions. I’m afraid humans just don’t care and only complain.
Yep, you are completely right. All three species of elephants are getting close to extinction, but the African bush elephant is in a much worse situation than the other two. Hopefully this new status as a species will allow governments to put stricter protection in place to take care of it.
Nothing to go with rich idiots killing them for fun or heathen Chinese make believe medicine..
The number of elephants is decreasing day by day. We should save elephants. You talked a lot about elephants that I did not know. I learned a lot through your post.
Yeah, we really should save them! I'm glad you learned something new :)
asian elephants have the shortest life span compared to the rest two but they are very friendly i mean unless they are in a bad mood, i've come across a lot
Oh, do you often meet wild elephants? That's really cool! Hope you don't meet one that's in a bad mood then.
Elephants in Sri Lanka also in danger. Among them, elephants with tusks are very hard to find. Some idiots are killing them to take the pearls inside them.
Yeah, we see a lot of elephants that are killed for their ivory.. It's very sad, but it's also one of the biggest threats to elephants these days.
If we preserve the trees and forests, we will be able to save our ecosystem. Not just the elephants, we will be able to save so many other species as well which are endangered.
That's true, but we must still focus on saving the species itself. The elephants are being poached due to their ivory, so I would say that it is not simply enough to preserve the forest itself.
The initiative to save the species alone may not be fruitful if they don't have proper habitat to live. Maybe we can conclude saying that we might have to preserve both the species and their habitat as well.
Yeah, that's a good conclusion :) Often saving the environment is enough, and the species will thrice by themselves, but sometimes we need a protection of the animals themselves as well :)
When I read the title to this I assumed that the new species of elephant would be one mistakenly thought of as a sub-species of the Asian elephant as I knew there were sub-species of that one. I was suprised to learn that the "new" species is actually African! Elephants were my favorite animal as a child and still remain my mom's favorite.
The African bush elephant also used to be classified as a subspecies, so it will be interesting to see if further genetic tests show that maybe even the Asian subspecies could be their own species :)
I found elephants more common in India than Africa (my views) so where do we place the specie from India. If you look at most indian movies you will see the use and mastery of elephant, please can you shed more light
I get why you might think that, but there are in fact 20 times as many African savannah elephants as there are Asian elephants.
Anyway, if we keep going this direction there's not gonna be any.... nor other wild animals... :/
Sorry, im frustrated with my specie
Yeah, that's unfortunately true :(
You're welcome. Sounds like an interesting video :)
I did enjoy your article. I find both existing and extinct elephants magnificent and wonderful species! I hope that the African forest elephants will get full acceptance on its status as a separate species in order to get better protection. We should really care more for our environment and our cousins (all animals are our cousins).
Hopefully this new study will help push people to accept it as its own species, whether they want to or not. There is overwhelmingly much evidence to support this claim by now.
Today i learnt new things about elephants ,their species one in africa and one in asia.@valth i want you to explain all the terms related to species in one article like in today's article you used the term interbreed and i didn't knew what does it means :(
By the way alot of new information :)
No, there is two in Africa and one in Asia :P
Interbreed means that you breed two animals that are from different species. For example you can have a tiger mate with a lion to get a liger.
Hi @valth, this is an interesting post about elephants. I didn't know about African elephants. It's quite different than the Asian elephants, though surprisingly, African elephants have 2 species, but still not very common, I think.
Yeah, the African and Asian elephants are pretty different from each other.
we are lucky that we asians also protect elephants.there are few elephants in a zoo near to my town we all take care of them
Well, having a few elephants in the zoo will not really affect the conservation status of the elephants at all. They are much better of being in the wild than in a cage.
It's amazing how powerful elephants are.
Yeah, they are huge animals with a lot of strength.
Wow even horses are pretty strong. I guess you would need at least 100 people to even have any shot against an elephant.
As I'm an Asian I just Recognize the first species and have seen it years ago in the zoo when I was a kid.
Others two are new to me, African savannah elephant and African bush elephant. These are new to me.
thanks for giving new information to add to my memory :)
You're welcome. I guess it is not that strange that you don't know about the African ones since you live in Asia :)
I never gone out of my country.
This is great. I never knew elephants are in species. Guess i dont ride wide. Well that's why we are here on steemit to teach others what they know nothing about and you just did. I will have to read more on this.
Yeah, I guess that's a good strength with Steemit; teaching other people cool stuff :) There are many skilled authors here who are more than willing to share their knowledge with the rest of us!
I just read your title about Elephants its look like interesting.
image source
I'm glad you think it's interesting :)
Good post my friend,l like elephant
Thanks.
I have never seen elephants in real and honestly i want to see their fight.today i have learnt different species of elephants ☺
Thank for informating us☺
I have never seen one in real life either. I'm glad you learned something new, @barbie.doll :)
well it look interesting just like your other post and i will read it to gain some information
I'm glad you think it is interesting :)
wow so beautiful nature......i like this post........
I'm glad you like it.
Your posts are full of interesting and amazing informations. I always engaged in your writing. Your writing skills are best. Whenever you do posts I give a full read to it. Because they are really interesting 👍🏻
Thanks for being here. Keep it on and keep sharing such type of posts with us.
Peace
Thanks, I'm glad you like the post and my writing :)
DNA solves so many mysteries
Yeah, we have settled so many different debates because of genetic tests in the last decade!
Very interesting article, the truth I have informed a lot about the elephants, thank you for sharing this information.
I'm glad you liked it :) Thanks for commenting!
I'm glad you learned something new from my post :)