Note 71 — Chapter VIII · ELEPHANTS

The elephantine development is altogether leisurely. The female does not attain maturity for fifteen years, so as the mother carries her calf twenty-two months, she is probably about seventeen years old when the first calf is born. She has only one at a birth, and suckles it for two years. (She has only two teats, which are situated between the fore-legs. The baby sucks with its mouth, not with the trunk.)

The male does not attain maturity till it is about twenty years of age, and when in captivity is not full grown till about twenty-five. In freedom it goes on growing till it is about thirty years old, and continues in its prime till it is about sixty.