The African elephant Loxodonta africana is the largest known living land amimal in the world. The familiar African bush elephant Loxodonta africana africana averages over three meters in height at the shoulder and weights up to 7,500 kilograms.
Some individuals top four meters in height.
The less familiar African forest elephant Loxodonta africana cyclotis is smaller and darker in color, averaging two and two thirds meters at the shoulder in height. The ears of forest elephants are also much rounder than those of their bush cousins. In 1906 Professor Theodore Noack formally described a third variety of African elephant, the pygmy elephant, and gave it the scientific name Loxodonta pumilio . Noack based his description upon an individual elephant then living in the Bronx Zoo. There the matter might have rested had no other pygmy elephants surfaced.