The Bottom Line: Fun facts about elephants!
The Full Story:
- African elephants are the largest land mammals on the planet.
- Female elephants undergo the longest pregnancy of any land mammal—22 months!
- Elephants don’t actually like peanuts. They don’t eat them in the wild, and zoos don’t feed them to their captive elephants.
- Elephants can get sunburned, so they take care to protect themselves by throwing sand on their backs and their head.
- The elephant’s closest living relative is the rock hyrax, a small furry mammal that lives in rocky landscapes across sub-Saharan Africa and along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine