If any animal is big enough to bring the nations together, it is the elephant. Recently, anthropologist Dr Colin Groves took part in an international collaboration on elephants. With co-workers Jeheskel Shoshani in America, Peter Grubb in Britain, and Joe Dudley in Zimbabwe, he wanted to find out whether the elephants of the African rainforests are just any old African elephants that just happen to prefer living under cover, or are a differnt race or even a different species, and whether there is even a third race, or species, the Pygmy Elephant. Forest Elephants are much smaller than Bush Elephants, at all ages.
Male elephants grow throughout life and so do females, although less dramatically.
An adult female Bush Elephant grows from about 2.3 to 2.6 metres tall, while a bull will already by this height at 15 years old and may reach 3.5 or 4 metres by the time he is 50. Female Forest Elephants are at least 50cm less and males a metre less, than Bush Elephants of the same sex and age. Bush Elephants have huge triangular ears, Forest Elephants have small round ones. Whereas Bush Elephants have thick tusks which curve forward, outward and upward, those of the Forest Elephant are thin, extremely long and nearly straight, and point almost directly downward, so that in old males they may alsmost touch the ground. Ivory carvers know that a Forest Elephant's ivory is hard and compact, while a Bush Elephant's is soft and spongy.