female elephant
male elephant
.
.
When viewed from the side, female elephants (cows) have a forehead which rises up almost vertically, then angles back at almost 90 degrees, giving it an angular, almost square appearance.
.
.
.
.
.
Bulls’ foreheads, on the other hand, are much rounder and slope gently back.
Pretty cool, huh?
..
.
.
Of course there are other ways to tell elephants apart – but not necessarily what you’d think. Checking their genitals can be misleading because males have internal testes, but cows have mammary glands between their front legs, rather than their rear legs – the only mammal other than primates to have them here.
But the best way to tell male and female elephants apart, at least in the wild, is to look at who they’re hanging out with. Females generally live in large, close-knit social groups called ”breeding herds”, which generally will have one or more babies or youngsters. Males on the other hand are either solitary or live in smaller, less close “bachelor” groups of adolescent and adult males – no babies.
The African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) is on the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species as “vulnerable”. Population trend: increasing
