Mondo Knows Facts
An elephant is pregnant for about 22 months
That is the longest gestation of any land mammal The calf is born heavy and can stand within hours, which matters in a herd that moves. Females in the herd assist at the birth and the calf is raised with help from older relatives. Elephants have the longest interval between births of any large mammal. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Elephants talk in frequencies we cannot hearTheir low rumbles travel through the ground and through the air for kilometresAn elephant trunk has about 40,000 muscle unitsThat flexibility lets it lift a log or pick up a single seedA newborn kangaroo is smaller than a grapeThe joey climbs unaided to the pouch and attaches to a teatNine banded armadillos are always born in foursThe four young come from one fertilised egg and are identicalMale seahorses carry the pregnancyFemales deposit eggs in his brood pouch and he gives birth to live youngNest temperature decides whether turtle hatchlings are male or femaleWarmer sand produces more females in most sea turtle species
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Tags: elephants, reproduction, development
An elephant is pregnant for about 22 months: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- That is the longest gestation of any land mammal. The figure is taken from Smithsonian, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.