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Asian Elephants stronger than African Elephants?!?!
Topic Started: Oct 5 2012, 10:27 PM (9,199 Views)
blaze
Carnivore
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@tigerr
If that's how it reads to you then sorry, I wasn't very clear, what I meant is that maybe there are some factors (not exclusively the forest having denser vegetation, notice I mentioned other factors) that make asian forest bovids be larger not only than african forest bovids but african savannah bovids, such factors might not affect elephants, after all bovids and elephants have different ways of digesting plant matter, however as I acknowledged before I don't have any solid evidence that is the case so I have no problems in saying 'I'm wrong" and abandoning that idea.
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pckts
Heterotrophic Organism
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moldovan0731
May 15 2015, 01:22 AM
Only at parity, at average sizes African elephant is obviously stronger.
Posted Image
Thats a Bull with female Asian for comparison
"Modern Asian Elephants have a closer genetic connection to pre-historic Columbian Mastodons than they do to modern African Elephants."
I thought that statement above was interesting

I saw Africans from kruger and Asians at the San Diego Safari Park and LA Zoo, the asian were closer so they looked larger but the africans were obviously huge as well, just much further away. Im sure when trying to decide who's stronger its going to be splitting hairs and you're obviously going to lean towards the one with a significant weight advantage most likely.

Posted Image
Posted Image
All Females together
Posted Image


Youngsters playing together
Posted Image
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Warsaw2014
Herbivore
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"There is a strong belief that Asian elephants are much
heavier than African elephants of the same shoulder height
(Roth 1990; Christiansen 2004; Lister and Stuart 2010). This
concept has developed because the body mass data obtained
for E. maximus has generally been taken from captive individuals
(zoo and circus animals). Comparing the weights obtained
from E. maximus by several authors (Benedict 1936;
Wood 1981; Christiansen 2004) with the data from wild
and captive animals under optimal nutritional conditions
(Sukumar et al. 1988; Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998), it
can be stated that the generally used data came from clearly
obese animals, some specimens from Benedict (1936) and
Christiansen (2004) are up to 60–85% heavier than elephants
of the same shoulder height in good conditions (see
Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998). An average-sized male E.
maximus (275 cm), in optimal conditions, is about 4000
kg and an average fully grown female elephant (non-pregnant)
is around 2700 kg (Sukumar et al. 1988; Kurt and
Kumarasinghe 1998). The fact is that E. maximus is only
slightly heavier than L. africana. It is true that E. maximus
has a proportionally broader pelvis and more compact body
than the African elephant, but L. africana has a more elongated
body. This means that there are no significant differences
in body mass between E. maximus and L. africana of
the same shoulder height. These differences are mainly due
to the fact that it is not possible to compare both species in
the same conditions. A 275 cm male E. maximus is a fully
grown individual, while a male L. africana of this shoulder
height is a sub-adult animal and is not as robust as a fully
mature individual (see Hanks 1972). Therefore the African
elephant would be less heavy. But if we compare both species
at 300 cm, both of them will attain nearly the same body
mass of about 5000 kg, because the Asian elephant gets
more slender at this shoulder height (due to allometry, see
below) and the African elephant gets broader because it is
nearly a fully-grown animal"
"Exceptionally tall individuals and allometry.—Among
modern animals there is a very small percentage of record-sized
individuals. These specimens are extremely rare,
usually there is one among hundreds of thousands, or even
millions. With regard to modern elephants, record-sized
specimens are about 25% taller than average. The tallest
Elephas maximus on record was a huge male shot in
Assam, India, in 1924. Using the conventional method of
multiplying the forefoot circumference by two (Wood 1982;
Sukumar et al. 1988), it was estimated to be 343 cm at the
shoulders (Pillai 1941; Wood 1982). A few more individuals
of this size category have been reported in recent history
(Wood 1982; Lister and Blashford-Snell 1999). On the other
hand, the tallest Loxodonta africana bulls on record probably
reached 400 cm at the shoulders (Wood 1982). The
largest, accurately-measured African bush elephant was a
gigantic bull shot in Angola in 1974 (Ward et al. 1975; Wood
1982; Haynes 1991). Its forefoot circumference was measured
at 180 cm (Wood 1982), indicating a shoulder height
of 396 cm. The shoulder height of mature L. africana can be
calculated by multiplying the circumference of the forefoot
by 2, plus 10% (Wood 1982). The projected line from the
highest point of the scapula of this individual to the base of
the extended forefoot, whilst lying on its side, was measured
at 417 cm, again indicating a shoulder height of about 396
cm. There is a difference of about 5% between the standing
and lying shoulder height of extant elephants because the
great weight tends to spread the body out laterally (Shoshani
et al. 1982 contra Hanks 1972; Wood 1982). However, important
calculation errors could have been made in several
record-sized specimens. In November 1955 an enormous
elephant (popularly known as Fenykovi) was shot in the
same area. This one was measured at 401 cm on its side,
suggesting its size to be 381 cm at the shoulders (Wood
1982). This specimen is stored at the Smithsonian Natural
History Museum and catalogued as USNM 304615. The
postcranial long-bone diaphyseal lengths of this specimen
(Roth 1990) show an animal nearly 10% taller than Jumbo
(AMNH 3283), indicating a shoulder height in the flesh of
about 350 cm and 7.5 tonnes of body mass, very far from
previous estimates of 31 cm (381 cm) in shoulder height and
nearly 3.5 tonnes (10.9 tonnes) in body mass (Wood 1982).
The biggest African elephants on record are usually estimated
to be up to 12 tonnes of body mass (Wood 1982; Paul
1997). These estimates correspond to an isometric growth,
but land animals change their proportions as they grow and
tend to become more robust and massive as they become bigger.
This is true for most land mammals. Mature elephants
attain greater body mass than sub-adult individuals of the
same shoulder height (see Kurt and Kumarasinghe 1998),
and in African elephants over 30 years of age the height increases
much less than the weight (Hanks 1972). Therefore,
proboscideans tend to become stockier as they mature (there
can be exceptions to this rule depending on nutritional conditions
and other factors). Does this mean that exceptionally
tall bulls are proportionally heavier? Or, at least, relatively
as heavy as fully grown average-sized specimens? Probably
not. It is known that in Namibia, where exceptionally tall
elephants survive, they have relatively longer legs (Wood
1982), indicating a negative body mass allometry in unusually
tall elephants; they are relatively less heavy compared
to the shoulder height as they have longer legs, and therefore
relatively shorter and narrower bodies. Therefore, a strong
negative allometry is also expected for oversized elephants.
Gould (1966) also observed an intraspecific mandible size
decrease vs. body length in Lucanus mearesi, in specimens
above average. It is also known that larger animals have a
general tendency toward shorter torso relative to the width
and head length vs. body length relationships, which almost
always show negative allometry due to the relatively decreasing
brain size (Gould 1966). These same results can be
observed in very tall humans, where a relatively long arm
and leg length vs. torso length is a rule, as is a relatively
small head size. This is due to the decreasing brain weight/
body size relation...
more:
https://app.pan.pl/archive/published/app61/app001362014.pdf
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animalkingdom
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Omnivore
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At same weight def asian elephant,on average african bish elephant are larger therefore stronger.
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Finderskeepers
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Omnivore
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Mebbe square cube law? Applied to the muscles?
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