How many elephants equal your weight?
An adult African elephant weighs about 5,000 kg (5 tonnes). A 75 kg adult is roughly 1.5% of one elephant — or putting it another way, it would take 67 of you stacked on a scale to balance one elephant.
How elephants get so big
Elephants are the largest land animals on Earth. African bush elephants (the larger of the two African species) can reach 6,000 kg for males and 3.5 m tall at the shoulder. Their size is supported by some of the densest, strongest bones in the animal kingdom — particularly their leg bones, which are nearly solid where most mammal bones are partly hollow. The classic image of "elephant on a small footstool" works in physics because their weight is distributed across surprisingly small feet (about 1,500 cm² of contact area per foot).
| Species | Adult weight | Height (shoulder) |
|---|---|---|
| African bush elephant (male) | 4,000–7,000 kg | 3.0–3.4 m |
| African bush elephant (female) | 2,400–3,500 kg | 2.6–2.9 m |
| African forest elephant | 2,000–4,000 kg | 2.0–2.5 m |
| Asian elephant (male) | 3,000–5,000 kg | 2.4–3.0 m |
| Asian elephant (female) | 2,000–3,000 kg | 2.1–2.6 m |
Elephant food and water
To maintain their enormous mass, elephants eat 150–300 kg of food and drink 150 litres of water per day. That\'s a daily food intake equal to two average adults\' total body weight — and they spend 16–18 hours a day eating to manage it. Most of what they eat is grass, leaves, bark and fruit. They\'re fully herbivorous, so all that mass is built from plants.
Elephant trivia
- The heaviest elephant ever recorded weighed 10,400 kg — over 10 tonnes (Angola, 1974). That\'s roughly 140 average adults in one animal.
- An elephant\'s heart weighs 12–21 kg alone — more than most large dogs.
- An elephant\'s trunk has 40,000+ muscles and can lift up to 300 kg or grip a single peanut.
- Elephant brains weigh 4.5–5.5 kg — the largest brain of any land animal — and elephants pass mirror self-recognition tests, mourn their dead and use tools.
Try other animal comparisons
If elephants make you feel small, try the cat calculator, corgi calculator, or find your animal weight twin.