How much do baby elephants weigh?

“Don’t be a big kid!” Sounds like an insult, but in the case of elephants, it can be a compliment. The average (human) boy, born in America, weighs 7.5 pounds (usually boys weigh slightly more than girls). Elephants many more. Let’s see how much the baby elephant weighs.

How much does the baby elephant weigh?

Baby elephants weigh around 200 pounds at birth and will grow to 8-15,000 pounds over the next 20 years! They can reach heights of 10-13 feet! Depending on the species and gender of the elephant, babies can start from 150 pounds or up to 360 pounds.

Here are some notes about baby elephants to help you understand how big baby elephants can get:

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• The largest baby elephant ever born at the San Diego Zoo was a 281 pound calf. Was born in September 2018.
• An even larger baby elephant will appear at the Houston Zoo on May 12, 2020. The male Asian elephant calf weighed 326 pounds!

Baby elephants are growing fast! For example, a baby elephant will appear in Tucson in 2020, and within nine months it weighed 900 pounds! The young elephant was gaining about 85 pounds a month! Surprisingly, despite the size of the elephants, twins are possible. Elephants give birth to twins in about 1% of pregnancies, compared to people who have twins in 3.21% of pregnancies.

Let’s take a closer look at newborn elephants of each species.

Baby African bush elephants

The African bush elephant is the largest of all elephants and the largest land animal. Male babies can reach 360 pounds at birth with an average height of around 260 pounds and a height of 3 feet. An elephant has a gestation period of about 22 months, which makes sense if you are raising a 260 pound baby! If an elephant had the same pregnancy as humans, 9 months old, babies would have to add about 30 pounds a month! When it’s over 22 months, it approaches 12 pounds a month, and a pregnant woman is better at it.

Within an hour after birth, elephants can get up and walk. They must be able to stand to reach the mother’s belly in order to receive the first milk. They eat with their mouths, not with their trunk, as some think. Baby elephants will drink about 3 gallons of milk a day! For the first four months of life, they rely solely on milk, and then gradually add vegetation to it. African savannah elephants live in central and southern Africa, where there is an abundance of leaves, branches, roots and grasses to eat.

Baby african forest elephants

The smallest of the elephant species, the African forest elephant is very similar to the savanna elephant, but lives in West and Central Africa and, as the name suggests, they live in rainforests. Their diet consists of leaves, tree bark, herbs and fruits. Baby African forest elephants are slightly smaller than savannah elephants, but larger than Asian elephants. At birth, they are about 200 pounds and are about 3 feet tall. Forest elephants also have a gestation period of about 22 months.

Baby asian elephants

Asian elephants have an average calf weight of 200-250 pounds, and some as little as 150 pounds. Although Asian elephants look different from African elephants, they have a lot in common. Asian elephants also have a very long gestation period of 18-22 months. Baby elephants start with breast milk and then gradually add grass and bamboo. Asian elephants eat more grass than African elephants, but they can still eat enough to grow to enormous size. They can grow up to £ 6,000-11,000!