Elephants
by Mai Adams

Elephants are useful animals in many countries throughout the world. Nowadays, people try to protect these unusual animals.

The Asian government and African government make laws to protect these elephants. These countries use the elephants for transportation and as workers. People train the elephants to pull the trees to where they want them to go. The elephants can go miles and miles.

The elephants use their trunks to knock down trees. They have knobs on their trunks that they use like a hand. They use their knobs to pull up big trees or small branches. The trunk is also used to smell for good things like bananas, grass and leaves.

Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants, are easier to train, and weigh about 12,000 pounds. African elephants weigh about 14,000 pounds.

Elephants have two ears. Each ear is about one and a half to two feet long. Its two tusks are about three feet long. Their trunk is about four to five feet long. It has a tail that is about five to six feet in length. An African elephant has two knobs, while an Asian elephant has only one. The skin of elephants is very tough, thick and wrinkled.

Because the elephant is so useful and valuable to countries in Asia and Africa, the people in those countries try to protect them. Laws have been enacted that protect elephants against those who would kill them for their valuable tusks and have made killing elephants a crime, punishable by imprisonment.