Why are elephants the largest mammals on earth?
409085
Whales(the blue whale)are the largest mammals.As to why they are,it cannot be answered!Why is the world round?
461482
well the biggest of course. the biggest would have the most vasculature to keep all of its little cells alive. And that marvelous animal would be the blue whale a huge a$$ mammal with a huge a$$ heart and huge a$$ vessels.
49528
Elephants have the longest gestation of all mammals. Pregnancy lasts about 22 months.
213674
sea mammal- Blue Whale ( 128 tons)\nland mammal- African Elephant ( about 7 tons)
259118
Humans ARE animals. We are a mammalian species of bipedal primates called "homo sapiens."\n\nMany people believe humans are separate from animals because of our superior intelligence, but I think intelligence is just a trait that every animal has, some more than others. Cheetahs and peregrine falcons are superior in speed, elephants and Kodiak bears are superior in strength, and squirrels and jaguars are superior in agility, for a few other examples of superiority. Just because we are capable of more things than other animals intellectually does not make us something foreign to the Animal Kingdom.
420412
Not only do mature elephants weigh too much to support landing on all fours, but their legs are designed for strength rather than leaping ability.Elephant’s bone structure makes it difficult for them to bend their legs sufficiently to derive enough force to propel the big lugs up.
394902
Yes. In addition to their large evergrowing incisors (the tusks), they have massive molars with a crushing surface that looks like one of those old washing tables. They have 6 upper and 6 lower molariforms on each side, but only 2 of them are functioning at a given time. The others are inside the alveoli in the skull and jaw bone and come out after the first ones get completely worn. They don't have more than those 6 replacements, so when their last molars are worn, they cannot grind food (old elephants in zoos need a special soft diet).\n\nHere's a photograph showing the crushing surface of the molar teeth:\nhttp://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/skulls/loxodonta/l._africana/163809.tooth.jpg/view.html\n\nAnd a frontal view of the skull with the incisors:\nhttp://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/zoology/bagful/1971A.JPG
895356
Elephants because they are stong and can be very agressive. They would use their tusks to stab the polar bear if they don't trample it. Normly, though, most beings just run away at the site of the immense size of an elephant. I'm not saying that the polar bear will run away, but it would probably stand down and be dicouraged.
783092
I think one potential source of your confusion is the fact that there was in fact more than one mammoth species.\n\nThe most famous mammoth is the so called woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), but there were others such as the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), Jefferson's mammoth (Mammuthus jeffersoni), Channel Island dwarf mammoth (Mammuthus exilis), southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis), steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii), and the Imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator).  And those are just the North American varieties.  There were more in Asia and Europe.\n\nThe woolly mammoth was actually slightly smaller than the Asian elephant (which is actually more closely related to the mammoths than the African elephants are).\n\nHowever other species, like the Columbian mammoth, were much larger.  The largest specimen of the Columbian mammoth from the La Brea tar pits was 12 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed about 10 tons - much larger than the largest African elephants today.\n\nSome species were much, much smaller, especially those that inhabited isolated islands.  The Channel Islands dwarf mammoth  was only four to eight feet tall.  \n\nHopefully this helps to clear up some of the confusion.\n\nUPDATE:\n\nYes, the male African elephant does average about 12 feet at the shoulder.  This is one of the problems with taking just one measuer to determine "size".  The proportions of mammoths and African elephants are slightly different, and the way they hold their heads are different, so a simple shoulder measure, or measure to the top of the head doesn't tell the whole story.  There are also differences in the length of the legs that make a considerable difference when comparing height and weight.  Mammoths tend to have relatively stubby legs, while the African elephants are longer limbed, almost rangy in comparison.\n\nFor a really big elephant, there is also the extinct Miocene proboscideans the Deinotheres, which may have been 15 to 18 feet at the shoulder.
584222
A) the number of offspring-\nEven if you didnt know this, you could figure it out by the process of elimination, going from monkeys to apes (even including humans)- Primates have gotten bigger (apes are bigger in general than monkeys) apes (and humans) live longer than monkeys, apes (and humans) take many more years to raise children than monkeys, and apes (and humans) dont sexually mature for a very long time compared to monkeys- That only leaves (A).  If you think about it, apes and humans generally only have a single offspring at a time, at most one a year-thats about as decreased as you can get.  Of course, Elephants may only have one offspring ever, but they arent primates.
900893
Elephants eat peanuts in zoo's because that's generally the only place they can get them ,,,,  but other wises it's more or less a myth ,,,,  Elephants are vegetarians ,,,, They eat constantly and can consume as much as 400 pounds of food daily ,,,, It takes allot to sustain them so that's why they require a huge range or environment ,,,, Their size is just the nature of their species ,,,, The wild elephants range is constantly decreasing because of the clearing of their habitat and deforestation by man to make way for his farms ,,,,  As a result man and elephant are having a hard time co-existing with each other as time goes on and unless something is done it will mean an end to this wonderful and interesting creature ,,,,,
280247
By considerable measure, the largest known animal on Earth is the blue whale. Mature blue whales can measure anywhere from 75 feet (23 m) to 100 feet (30.5 m) from head to tail, and can weigh as much as 150 tons (136 metric tons). That's as long as an 8- to 10-story building and as heavy as about 112 adult male giraffes! These days, most adult blue whales are only 75 to 80 feet long; whalers hunted down most of the super giants. Female blue whales generally weigh more than the males. The largest blue whale to date is a female that weighed 389,760 pounds (176,792 kg). \n\n blue whale's head is so wide that an entire professional football team -- about 50 people -- could stand on its tongue. Its heart is as big as a small car, and its arteries are wide enough that you could climb through them. Even baby blue whales dwarf most animals. At birth, a blue whale calf is about 25 feet (7.6 m) long and weighs more than an elephant. And they do grow up fast: During the first 7 months of its life, a blue whale drinks approximately 100 gallons (379 liters) of its mother's milk per day, putting on as much as 200 pounds (91 kg) every 24 hours. An adult blue whale can eat more than 4 tons (3.6 metric tons) of krill, a tiny shrimp-like creature, every day. \n\nThis puts blue whales well above any known land mammal in terms of size. Most people believe that the largest animals to ever exist on Earth were the dinosaurs. However, one of the largest land dinosaurs, the sauropod Argentinosaurus, weighed only about 180,000 pounds (81,647 kg). That's little more than half the size of an adult blue whale. It makes a lot of sense that the world's largest animal would be a sea creature. Land animals have to support their own weight, whereas sea creatures get some help from the water.
63099
elephant seal \n\n \nScientific classification \nKingdom: Animalia \nPhylum: Chordata \nClass: Mammalia \nOrder: Carnivora \nFamily: Phocidae \nGenus: Mirounga \n \nSpecies \nM. leonina\nM. angustirostris\n \nThere are two species of elephant seal. They are the sole members of the genus Mirounga of the family Phocidae or "true seals".\n\nThe species are the Northern Elephant Seal, Mirounga angustirostris, and the Southern Elephant Seal, M. leonina. Both species were hunted nearly to extinction by the end of the nineteenth century but numbers have since recovered. The Southern Elephant Seal is somewhat the bigger of the two.\n\nThe elephant seals get their name from their great size and the fact that the adult males have a large proboscis, which is used in making extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating season. Elephant seals are also quite large, as the largest known bull elephant seal was 22 feet (6.7 m) in length and weighed 7,500 lb (3,400 kg). This makes them indeed the largest members of the order Carnivora that ever lived
664236
The blue whale is the largest animal on Earth.  Its heart is the size of a Volkswagen Bug, its tail is as wide as the wingspan of a small aircraft, and some of its blood vessels are so wide that you could swim through them.  \n\nIt is also considered the loudest animal by decibel measure, but since sound travels better than water than through air, perhaps a land animal (i.e. african elephant) deserves the title.
51106
The Blue Whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest mammal living today. It is also the largest mammal to have ever lived. In fact the Blue whale is the largest animal ever to have lived on the planet as far as we know; bigger by far than ever the largest Dinosaur. The longest Blue Whale ever measured was a female, 33.58 m or 110ft long. The heaviest weighed over 190 tonnes. We haven't actually got a set of weighing scales big enough so weights are estimated from the cut up remains.\n\nThe largest animal on land at the moment on this planet is a mammal; the bull African Elephant. The largest specimen recorded stood around 3.96 m or 13ft at the shoulder and weighed over 12 tonnes.
559846
(m)\n\nUnlike Asian elephants, in which only males have tusks, both male and female African elephants are tusked. However, due to the hunting pressure on tusked animals brought about by poaching for ivory, tusklessness is an increasingly common condition in African elephants. \n\nElephants use their tusks to pry bark off trees or dig for roots, and in social encounters as an instrument of display or as a weapon\n\nHumans grow two sets of teeth in their lifetimes - the rootless "milk teeth" of childhood and the second, rooted set of teeth which are supposed to last into old age. With the amount of food elephants eat every day, their teeth wear down at alarming rates, and that's why they grow not two but six sets of chewing teeth (molars) in their lifetimes. Tusks do not wear out so fast, so an elephant does not grow more than one set in its life. In fact, tusks are rootless, just like human milk teeth. However, they do continue to grow in length throughout the lifetime of the elephant
759429
Humans don't have trunks.  Elephants do, though.