AnAge entry for Loxodonta africana

Classification (HAGRID: 03165)
Taxonomy	Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia (Taxon entry) Order: Proboscidea Family: Elephantidae Genus: Loxodonta
Species	Loxodonta africana
Common name	African elephant
Lifespan, ageing, and relevant traits
IMR	0.002/year
MRDT	8 years
Maximum longevity	65 years (captivity)
Source	ref. 671
Sample size	large
Data quality	acceptable
Observations	Under optimal conditions, males attain sexually maturity at about 10 years of age and females at 11 years of age. Some animals, however, may not reach sexual maturity until they are 20 years old, and males generally do not reproduce until they are over 20 years of age. Elephants are long-lived mammals, but probably not as long-lived as often cited. Females remain fertile for about 55-60 years and elephants have been estimated to live up to 70 years in the wild [0434]. More conservative estimates suggest elephants live up to 65 years in the wild [0536]. In captivity, there are anecdotal reports of animals living over 80 years. Record longevity, however, belongs to one wild born female that was still living at 53-54 years of age [0671]. Despite having as much as six sets of molars in a lifetime, elephants suffer from teeth erosion as a type of mechanical senescence.
Life history traits (averages)
Female sexual maturity	4,018 days
Male sexual maturity	3,650 days
Gestation	670 days
Weaning	1,071 days
Litter size	1 (viviparous)
Litters per year	0.2
Inter-litter interval	1,707 days
Weight at birth	105,000 g
Weight at weaning	600,000 g
Adult weight	4,800,000 g
Postnatal growth rate	0.0003 days^-1 (from Gompertz function)
Maximum longevity residual	126 %
Metabolism
No information on metabolism available.
References
[0671] Richard Weigl (2005), Longevity of Mammals in Captivity; from the Living Collections of the World [0536] Wiese and Willis (2004), Calculation of longevity and life expectancy in captive elephants [0610] Ernest (2003), Life history characteristics of placental non-volant mammals [0434] Ronald Nowak (1999), Walker's Mammals of the World [0676] Purvis and Harvey (1995), Mammal life-history evolution: a comparative test of Charnov’s model [0677] Saether and Gordon (1994), The adaptive significance of reproductive strategies in ungulates, PubMed [0455] Virginia Hayssen et al. (1993), Asdell's Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction: A Compendium of Species-Specific Data [0002] Caleb Finch (1990), Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome [0680] Wootton (1987), The effects of body mass, phylogeny, habitat, and trophic level on mammalian age at first reproduction [0731] Zullinger et al. (1984), Fitting sigmoid equations to mammalian growth curves
External resources
Integrated Taxonomic Information System	ITIS 584939
Animal Diversity Web	ADW account
Encyclopedia of Life	Search EOL
Genome Project	Search NCBI
Entrez	Search all databases Entrez Taxonomy search
Ageing literature	Search Google Scholar Search PubMed Search Scirus
Images	Google Image search
Internet	Search Google

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