The difference between African and Asian elephants

I have a silver elephant pendant, which I love because it depicts an African elephant, which is very unusual in Europe.

When you see elephants depicted in jewellery or fashion items sold in Europe, they are generally Asian elephants. This is probably because many items sold in Europe are sourced and/or produced in Asia. You also often see tigers and elephants together on animal print fabric. Africa has no tigers so elephants are more commonly depicted with other native species like giraffe and lion.

African elephants are much bigger than Asian elephants, they have way larger fan-shaped ears, and both the males and females have tusks.

There are two types of African elephants – savanna/bush elephants (larger than forest elephants with outward curving tusks) and forest elephants (smaller, darker and with straighter, downward pointing tusks). South Africa has bush elephants, and my pendant is a bush elephant.

African elephant have Africa-shaped ears, strangely enough. They are the largest land animal and healthy adult elephants (particularly in herds) have no predators due to their size (apart from us humans, of course). Sick or young elephants are more vulnerable, however.

The video below was taken by my husband in Addo Elephant Park (South Africa’s third largest national park). My brother-in-law says ‘just stand’ to my sister who was driving. We thought it was better to stay still until the ellie had passed the car.