Sex, Age and Height Determination in Asiatic Elephant (Elephas Maximus): A Case Study

The Asian or Asiatic elephant [1] is the only living species of the genus Elephas and is distributed in Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east [2]. They are the largest living land animals in Asia and are primarily threatened by degradation, fragmentation loss of habitat and poaching [1]. Female captive elephants live beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, such as forest camps, but die at a much younger age and are declining due to a low birth and high death rate when kept in the zoos [3]. In general, the Asian elephant is smaller than the African elephant and has the highest body point on the head. The back is convex or level [4]. The ears are small with dorsal borders folded laterally. It has up to 20 pairs of ribs and 34 caudal vertebrae. The feet have more nail-like structures than those of African elephants, i.e. five on each forefoot and four on each hind foot. It becomes very difficult for a wild life expert or an Anatomist to differentiate the sex and to determine the age and height of an elephant when only the skeleton is available due to availability of scanty literature in this regard. So, the present investigation was carried out on the skeleton of the dead Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) to determine its sex, tentative age and height by investigating on the skeleton provided.