SAN DIEGO — For a hundred years, the accepted way to manage elephants in zoos was through close contact and dominance, including whacking the mammoth mammals with sticks or ax handles when they were ...

African elephants engage in more than 200 different known postures, helping them convey an array of emotions, from aggression to ambivalence. Complex and unfamiliar, elephant behavior can be difficult ...

Elephants are incredibly intelligent and social animals with several sophisticated methods of communication. They use all their senses — hearing, sight, touch, and smell — to interact within their own ...

Elephants create inaudible seismic waves when they move or “rumble” that complement the audible sound we hear and that researchers can detect using geophones placed in the ground. In a new study, ...

An elephant at the Berlin Zoo can use her trunk to peel bananas, an unusual behavior she engages in only when conditions are ripe. By Emily Anthes Pang Pha is an elephant of discriminating taste.

One spring, after a long winter, an aged elephant lay dying at the bank of a small stream near the coast of what is now northern Italy. Soon after, some scavengers arrived to dine on this huge ...

Joyce Poole was 6 years old and living in Malawi when her family drove north to see the wild African elephants of what is now Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. On spotting a majestic male elephant, ...

"I've never been bored photographing elephants," says National Geographic photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols, who has been documenting elephants in the rain forests and savannas of Africa for over 20 ...

Elephants express a wide range of emotions through their body language. For example, an anxious elephant often holds its tail stiffly out to one side, while a calm and relaxed elephant will typically ...