Numbers are not exact because it is very hard to count individual animals, especially those that live in the forest. An elephant has thick skin to protect it from the elements, such as heavy rain, prickly vegetation and hot sun. Its skin can be from a quarter to an inch and a half thick. Most elephants are a brownish-gray. Sometimes elephants throw dirt on themselves for protection from burning sun and insect bites, and the color of the dirt can make them look as if they are a different color.
Elephants eat all kinds of vegetation, including peanuts.
Elephants spend much of their waking hours looking for food and eating. These herbivores need more than 300 pounds of vegetation to meet their daily nutritional needs. An elephant can eat more than 300 pounds of food a day so they produce considerable waste. In addition, an elephant urinates 15 gallons of fluid a day. The waste is important to the ecology where elephants live in the wild because it helps to disperse plant seeds.