History of World Elephant Day

Last Updated on: August 31, 2022

History of World Elephant Day

History

World Elephant Day was co-founded on August 12, 2012, by Canadian Patricia Sims and the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation of Thailand, an initiative of HM Queen Sirikit of Thailand. Since that time, Patricia Sims has continued to lead World Elephant Day. Since its inception of global awareness building, it has partnerships with 100 elephant conservation organizations worldwide and reaches countless individuals across the globe. Millions of participants worldwide have shown their concern about the plight of elephants through acknowledgement of World Elephant Day, proving that people love elephants and want to do whatever they can to help.

World Elephant Day is the vehicle by which organizations and individuals can rally together to give voice to the issues threatening elephants. Its vision of the “neutral” approach allows and facilitates all organizations and citizens to conduct campaigns under the auspices of World Elephant Day, permitting everyone to work together to support this critical global issue which demands cooperation across borders and political lines. This powerful, collective global voice provides citizens, policy-makers, politicians, and governments a way to create and support conservation solutions that will make the world a safe place for elephants, wildlife, and habitat for future generations to cherish.

Top 15 facts about elephants

1. Elephants are pregnant for a whopping 22 months. Longer than any other animal. That’s nearly 2 years!

2. At birth, a baby elephants weigh 210 lbs (or 95kg).

3. African elephants are smaller at birth than Asian elephants but are much bigger as adults.

4. The trunk is an incredibly useful, dexterous and clever appendage. It is able to sense the size, shape and temperature of an object.

5. Their trunks are pretty incredible and elephants have an amazing sense of smell, but their eyesight isn’t great.

6. To prove that point, elephants can smell water from 12 miles away!

7. That makes sense when you consider that they drink 210 litres of water a day.

8. Elephants spend up to 16 hours foraging every day.

9. But only 2-3 hours are spent sleeping. That shows what their priorities are!

10. All those mud baths that elephants take? That is because elephants actually have very sensitive skin, so they use the mud and dust to protect it

11. The typical lifespan of an elephant is 70 years!

12. Sadly, around 100 elephants are killed every day for their ivory tusks.

13. On a lighter note, elephants are the only mammals besides humans to have chins!

14. An elephant has more than 100,000 muscle. 40 000 of which are in that amazing trunk. To put that in perspective, we humans have a paltry 639!

15. But elephants are afraid of bees!