Elephants!

Ten things I learned about elephants while at Elephant Nature Park, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

1) Trunks have up to 140,000 muscles in them, primarily used for insisting you give him that watermelon. 

2) An elephant that looks pregnant might just be fat. 

3) In unnatural situations (I.e, forced breeding), a female's hip can be broken during mating. 

4) Elephants have a more developed brain (frontal cortex?) that can experience emotions like humans or dolphins do. 

5) A four-year-old elephant whose mom just had a baby will act out, similar to a human four-year-old (I may know one that fits this description...) :)

6) In the wild, elephants travel in family herds. When several unrelated elephants are in the same place, they'll form their own family. Sounds like college!

7) Elephants loooove the water. But they don't actually need to be scrubbed for 20 minutes by tourists. 

8) When an elephant moves, you move. 

9) At 5 weeks old a baby elephant is strong enough (or big enough) to push a grown man around, and its mother is hungry and pushes the little bugger out of the way to eat. 

10) There are only 2,500-4,500 Asian elephants left in the wild. And many being mistreated. And many being saved. Be nice to elephants!