Proboscis numbers. Squad Proboscis - Proboscidea. Social behavior and activity time

Proboscis (lat. Proboscidea) - a detachment of placental mammals, owe their name to their main distinguishing feature - the trunk. The only representatives of proboscis today are the elephant family (Elephantidae). Extinct proboscis families include mastodons (Mammutidae).

Proboscis are distinguished not only by their trunk, but also by their unique tusks, as well as the largest size among all mammals on land. These peculiarities are by no means a hindrance, but, on the contrary, highly specialized adaptations. Once upon a time, many proboscis families lived on earth, some of which had four tusks. Today there is only a family of elephants in a very limited living space.

Proboscis formations were barely noticeable at the beginning and served proboscis ancestors living in swamps as a means to breathe underwater. Later, the trunks, with their many muscles, developed into finely sensitive grasping organs, which made it possible to pick both leaves from trees and grass in the steppes. Tusks during evolution reached 4 meters and had various shapes.

The African and Indian elephant are all that remain today from their many ancestors.

The head of an African elephant in profile looks sloping, in the form of a clearly defined angle; the ridge rises from the head to the shoulder blades, then drops and rises again to the hips.

The Indian elephant has pronounced brow ridges and a convex bump on the top of the head with a cleft in the middle; the back in the middle is higher than in the area of ​​the shoulder blades and hips.

Indian elephant

A powerful, massive animal, with a large broad-browed head, short neck, powerful body and columnar legs. The Indian elephant is smaller than the African counterpart. Its mass does not exceed 5 tons, and the height at the shoulders is 2.5-3 m. Unlike the African elephant, only males have tusks, but they are also 2-3 times shorter than the tusks of an African relative. The ears of the Indian elephant are smaller, stretched down and pointed.

Wild Indian elephants live in India, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Malacca, Sumatra and Sri Lanka. Due to the expansion of plantations and crops, the number of wild elephants is declining. Animals are destroyed as pests of agriculture, despite the ban. The Indian elephant, like the African one, is listed in the IUCN Red List.

The Indian elephant lives in forest thickets, usually keeps in family groups of 10-20 animals, sometimes there are herds of up to 100 or more individuals. The leader of the herd is usually an old female.

Unlike the African relative, the Indian elephant is easily tamed and easy to train. In hard-to-reach swampy places, elephants are used as riding animals. Four people can fit on the back of an animal in a gazebo, not counting the driver sitting on the neck of an elephant. Elephants are able to carry up to 350 kg of cargo. Trained elephants not only carry logs in logging sites, but also stack them in a certain order, load and unload barges. Indian elephants are bought by zoos and circuses around the world.

Indian elephants are inferior in size to African bush elephants, but their size is also impressive - old individuals (males) reach a weight of 5.4 tons with a height of 2.5 - 3.5 meters. Females are smaller than males, weighing an average of 2.7 tons. The smallest is a subspecies from Kalimantan (weight about 2 tons). For comparison, the African savannah elephant weighs from 4 to 7 tons. The body length of the Indian elephant is 5.5-6.4 m, the tail is 1.2-1.5 m. The Indian elephant is more massive than the African one. The legs are thick and comparatively short; the structure of the soles of the feet resembles that of an African elephant - there is a special springy mass under the skin. There are five hooves on the front legs, four on the hind legs. The body is covered with thick wrinkled skin; skin color - from dark gray to brown. The thickness of the skin of the Indian elephant reaches 2.5 cm, but it is very thin on the inside of the ears, around the mouth and anus. The skin is dry and has no sweat glands, so caring for it is an important part of an elephant's life. Mud baths protect elephants from insect bites, sunburn, and fluid loss. Dust baths, bathing and scratching on trees also play a role in skin hygiene. Often, depigmented pinkish areas are noticeable on the body of the Indian elephant, which give them a mottled appearance. Newborn baby elephants are covered with brownish hair, which is wiped off and thins with age, but even adult Indian elephants are more covered with coarse wool than African ones.

Albinos are very rare among elephants and are to a certain extent the object of worship in Siam. Usually they are only a little lighter and have a few even lighter spots. The best specimens were pale reddish-brown in color with a pale yellow iris and sparse white hair on the back.

The broad forehead, depressed in the middle and strongly convex laterally, has an almost vertical position; its mounds represent the highest point of the body (in the African elephant, the shoulders). The most characteristic feature that distinguishes the Indian elephant from the African is the relatively smaller size of the auricles. The ears of the Indian elephant never rise above the level of the neck. They are medium in size, irregularly quadrangular in shape, with a slightly elongated tip and an upper edge turned inwards. The tusks (elongated upper incisors) are significantly, 2-3 times smaller than those of the African elephant, up to 1.6 m long, weighing up to 20-25 kg. During the year of growth, the tusk increases by an average of 17 cm. They develop only in males, rarely in females. Among the Indian elephants there are males without tusks, which in India are called makhna (makhna). Especially often such males are found in the north-eastern part of the country; the largest number of tuskless elephants has a population in Sri Lanka (up to 95%)

Just as people are right-handed and left-handed, different elephants are more likely to use the right or left tusk. This is determined by the degree of wear of the tusk and its more rounded tip.

In addition to the tusks, the elephant has 4 molars, which are replaced several times during life as they wear out. When changing, new teeth do not grow under the old ones, but further on the jaw, gradually pushing the worn teeth forward. In the Indian elephant, the molars change 6 times during their life; the latter erupt by about 40 years. When the last teeth are worn down, the elephant loses the ability to eat normally and dies of starvation. As a rule, this happens by the age of 70.

The elephant's trunk is a long process formed by the nose and upper lip fused together. A complex system of muscles and tendons gives it great flexibility and mobility, allowing the elephant to manipulate even small objects, and its volume allows it to collect up to 6 liters of water. The septum (septum), which separates the nasal cavity, also consists of numerous muscles. An elephant's trunk is devoid of bones and cartilage; the only cartilage is at its end, separating the nostrils. Unlike the African elephant, the trunk ends in a single dorsal finger-like process.

The differences between the Indian elephant and the African are a lighter color, medium-sized tusks that are available only in males, small ears, a convex humpbacked back without a "saddle", two bulges on the forehead and a single finger-like process at the end of the trunk. Differences in the internal structure also include 19 pairs of ribs instead of 21, as in the African elephant, and structural features of the molars - the transverse dentin plates in each tooth of the Indian elephant are from 6 to 27, which is more than that of the African elephant. There are 33 tail vertebrae instead of 26. The heart often has a double apex. Females can be distinguished from males by the two mammary glands located on the chest. The elephant's brain is the largest among land animals and reaches a weight of 5 kg.

1. Meriterium, one of the first representatives of the proboscis, looked something like this (news.bbc.co.uk).

The oldest ancestors of modern elephants appeared about 60 million years ago - just five million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. They were pig-sized animals with enlarged incisors that looked like very small tusks. 35 million years ago, the ancient relatives of elephants lived in swamps and shallow waters and already resembled small hippos. The nose and upper lip in the process of evolution connected (apparently in order to make it easier to breathe underwater), forming a kind of trunk. The number of extinct proboscis species exceeds 170, and among them there were real giants weighing up to 24 tons. Relatively recently (by geological standards) mastodons, stegodons and mammoths became extinct. The last mammoths known to science lived on Wrangel Island and died out only 3.5 thousand years ago. The only non-extinct representatives of the proboscis order are two genera of elephants: Indian (one species) and African (two species: the bush elephant and the forest elephant).
The relationship between elephants and humans has been dramatic for centuries. So, one of the hypotheses of the extinction of mammoths is their extermination by an ancient man during uncontrolled hunting. Throughout historical time, hunting for elephants also flourished, but not for meat, but for the purpose of extracting “ivory” (tusks) and trading in products from them. Despite the fact that elephants remain the most “representative” of the living land animals (a stuffed 11-ton elephant is exhibited in the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid), the number of big-eared giants has been steadily decreasing. The rapid reduction in the area suitable for their habitat also plays an important role. Today, almost all wild elephants live in nature reserves and other protected areas.

Proboscis - a detachment of mammals, which includes the elephant family and their extinct species relatives (mastodons, mammoths, dinotheres). A distinctive feature of the detachment is the presence of a trunk in all its representatives. Marshes became the distribution area of ​​the ancestors of mammals. Therefore, as a result of evolution, they had a device for breathing in water - a trunk: its initial dimensions were quite small compared to today's elephant trunks. Later, the respiratory organ, equipped with powerful muscles, began to be used for grasping purposes, with its help, animals plucked leaves and fruits from trees, grass, and on a hot day they made a shower from water or mud.

The trunk is a fused and elongated nose and upper lip. It is driven by about fifty thousand muscles.

Another feature that unites the squad is thick skin that resists water pressure, allowing the animal to breathe normally. Proboscis tusks are modified teeth: fangs or incisors. With their help, animals remove the bark from trees, dig up salt deposits in the ground, and also protect themselves from enemies. Elephants have two tusks, represented by incisors. An extinct species, the mastodons, had four. They grow all their lives; during the excavations, tusks were found that reached a length of 4 m.

At present, the proboscis order includes only the elephant family, which in turn is divided into two species: Asian and African elephants. These are the largest mammals, all members of the family are herbivores. The main habitat of animals are meadows, but due to their unpretentiousness in the choice of food, they can be found in desert areas, in forests, in swampy areas. African elephants are slightly taller than their Asian relatives, females and males (in Asians only males) have tusks. Elephants have no hair. The tail is poorly developed. During the movement, the cub, in order to keep up with the herd, clings to the tail of an adult relative. Intestinal bacteria help animals to digest plant foods, but they only cope with this task by 60%.

Option 2

Proboscis are mammals that have a distinctive feature from other animals - a trunk. The only representatives of animals belonging to this class are elephants. There are many interesting facts about them that every connoisseur should know.

Elephants are one of a kind, they are considered giants because they are about 4 meters tall and weigh up to 7 tons. There are also smaller individuals, whose growth is up to 3 m, but the African elephant weighs about 8 tons and looks like a giant. The skin of elephants is thick - 2 cm, the skin of adults is wrinkled, without hairline. When a cub is born, it has hairline, which disappears over time.

The head of an elephant is round, his ears serve him not only as a means of perceiving sound, but they also protect the elephant from the heat, when it becomes necessary to cool down, he simply waves his ears. Although the elephant is a gigantic animal, it walks silently, but it cannot jump.

The trunk plays a huge role, it performs a whole host of functions, for starters, it is worth noting that the trunk is equipped with a large number of muscles and tendons. When an elephant wants to bathe, he draws water into his trunk and waters himself during the heat. Also on the tip of the trunk are the lips and nose, unique, isn't it? An elephant gets food with its trunk, feeds itself, feeds its offspring.

Elephant tusks grow throughout their lives, so that the massiveness and length of the tusks can determine the approximate age of the animal. The tail of the elephant is long, almost to the very ground, at the end of the tail there are dense long hairs in the form of a brush, just with this brush the elephant fights off flies.

Although the elephant is a giant, he is an excellent swimmer, if you look at his speed while running, he runs at speeds up to 50 km. per hour, and quietly goes 5 km. at one o'clock. These animals are among the centenarians, elephants live on average up to 65 years, in some cases even longer.

In captivity, elephants rarely breed, because there are no favorable conditions for this, such as temperature and freedom. In the wild, an elephant can bring offspring every 4 years. By the age of 12, the female is ready to bear a baby, and the males reach sexual maturity by the 15th year of life. The female elephant bears the cub for 22 months, before giving birth, the female leaves her herd, but does not go far from it, several elephants go with her to protect her and the newborn baby from predators. Sometimes, if there are difficulties during childbirth, elephants help to stretch the baby. Basically, a baby is born alone, it is rare when you can find that an elephant gave birth to two elephants at once.

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"Diversity of mammals" - Teeth. Artiodactyls. cetaceans. Lizards. Single pass. marsupials. Bats. Aardvarks. proboscis. Primates. Questions. Diversity of mammals. Odd-toed ungulates. variety of class members. Squads of mammals. Insectivores. Lagomorphs. Pinnipeds. Predatory. Rodents.

"Rhinos" - True, since rhinos are very clumsy, a person can easily escape by changing the trajectory of movement. Unlike Asian rhino species, African animals do not have skin folds. White rhinoceros (lat. Ceratotherium simum). Black rhinoceros (lat. Diceros bicornis). Javan rhinoceros (lat. Rhinoceros sondaicus). Indian rhinos are one-horned. The black rhinoceros, like the white one, has two horns, one of which is smaller than the second.

"Elephants" - What are commonly referred to as fangs are actually just a pair of incisors in the upper jaw. The dental system of elephants is also peculiar. The elephant's leg is wonderfully arranged. Elephant skin is thick, almost devoid of hair, and indented with a frequent network of wrinkles. Therefore, in the course of evolution, the upper lip and nose fused together developed into an amazing appendage - the trunk. An elephant's trunk is much bigger than a human's hand.

"Mouse" - The tail is at least 90% in relation to the length of the body. House mice have well-developed sense organs. The diet also includes insects. Any available materials are used for the nest. Sense organs. Mouse. laboratory mice. Distribution and types. Weight - 12-30 g. Ears are rounded. Mouse skeletal tomogram. Often occupied by holes of other rodents: voles, gerbils. About 130 subspecies of the house mouse have been described so far.

"Oviparous" - Marsupial devil. Test. Gray oriental kangaroo. Possums. Baby kangaroo. Platypus. marsupials. Order of marsupials. The origin of mammals is pteriodont. Echidna. classification of mammals. Opposum. Class Mammals. Koala. Mammals that lay eggs and have a cloaca. Monotreme or oviparous. Marsupial flying squirrel. marsupial marten. The marsupial wolf. The monotreme order is divided into two families: platypuses and echidnas.

"Higher Beasts" - Detachment Predatory. Useful animals. Consider the drawing. The amazing thing about animals. Let's collect material about bats. Put in the numbers. biological feature. Interview results. Bionics. Shrew. Pond nightlight. Animals. The bats. Wolf family. intermittent ultrasounds. Our favorites. collected material.