Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive grey skin.

[13] Some species of the extinct Palaeoloxodon were even larger, all exceeding 4 metres in height and 10 tonnes in body mass, with P. namadicus being a contender for the largest land mammal to have ever existed.

[15] By the late Eocene, some members of Proboscidea like Barytherium had reached considerable size, with an estimated mass of around 2 tonnes,[14] while others like Moeritherium are suggested to have been semi-aquatic.

[19] The earliest members of the modern genera of elephants (Elephas, Loxodonta) as well as mammoths, appeared in Africa during the latest Miocene–early Pliocene around 7-4 million years ago.

[22] The elephantid genera Elephas (which includes the living Asian elephant) and Mammuthus (mammoths) migrated out of Africa during the late Pliocene, around 3.6 to 3.2 million years ago.

[25] At the end of the Early Pleistocene, around 800,000 years ago the elephantid genus Palaeoloxodon dispersed outside of Africa, becoming widely distributed in Eurasia.

Proboscideans underwent a dramatic decline during the Late Pleistocene as part of the Late Pleistocene extinctions of most large mammals globally, with all remaining non-elephantid proboscideans (including Stegodon, mastodons, and the American gomphotheres Cuvieronius and Notiomastodon) and Palaeoloxodon becoming extinct, with mammoths only surviving in relict populations on islands around the Bering Strait into the Holocene, with their latest survival being on Wrangel Island, where they persisted until around 4,000 years ago.

[45] The skin is more elastic on the dorsal side of the elephant trunk than underneath; allowing the animal to stretch and coil while maintaining a strong grasp.

[65] Although tough, an elephant's skin is very sensitive and requires mud baths to maintain moisture and protection from burning and insect bites.

[72] The circular feet of an elephant have soft tissues, or "cushion pads" beneath the manus or pes, which allow them to bear the animal's great mass.

[71] Elephants are capable swimmers: they can swim for up to six hours while completely waterborne, moving at 2.1 km/h (1 mph) and traversing up to 48 km (30 mi) continuously.

At Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, elephant numbers have threatened several species of small birds that depend on woodlands.

[105] At Amboseli National Park, Kenya, female groups may consist of around ten members, including four adults and their dependent offspring.

Behaviours associated with musth include walking with a high and swinging head, nonsynchronous ear flapping, picking at the ground with the tusks, marking, rumbling, and urinating in the sheath.

A bull will follow a potential mate and assess her condition with the flehmen response, which requires him to collect a chemical sample with his trunk and taste it with the vomeronasal organ at the roof of the mouth.

[135] For African elephants, calls range from 15 to 35 Hz with sound pressure levels as high as 117 dB, allowing communication for many kilometres, possibly over 10 km (6 mi).

[139] One study of a captive female Asian elephant suggested the animal was capable of learning and distinguishing between several visual and some acoustic discrimination pairs.

In some countries, sport hunting of the animals is legal; Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have CITES export quotas for elephant trophies.

[151] Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Malawi wanted to continue the ivory trade and were allowed to, since their local populations were healthy, but only if their supplies were from culled individuals or those that died of natural causes.

The Asian elephant lives in areas with some of the highest human populations and may be confined to small islands of forest among human-dominated landscapes.

The Carthaginian general Hannibal famously took African elephants across the Alps during his war with the Romans and reached the Po Valley in 218 BC with all of them alive, but died of disease and combat a year later.

[164] An elephant's head and sides were equipped with armour, the trunk may have had a sword tied to it and tusks were sometimes covered with sharpened iron or brass.

Alexander the Great achieved victory over armies with war elephants by having his soldiers injure the trunks and legs of the animals which caused them to panic and become uncontrollable.

[166][167] These animals do not reproduce well in captivity due to the difficulty of handling musth bulls and limited understanding of female oestrous cycles.

Proponents of zoos argue that they allow easy access to the animals and provide fund and knowledge for preserving their natural habitats, as well as safekeeping for the species.

[168] Elephants have been recorded displaying stereotypical behaviours in the form of wobbling the body or head and pacing the same route both forwards and backwards.

[184] The ancient Romans, who kept the animals in captivity, depicted elephants more accurately than medieval Europeans who portrayed them more like fantasy creatures, with horse, bovine, and boar-like traits, and trumpet-like trunks.

During the 10th century AD, the people of Igbo-Ukwu, in modern-day Nigeria, placed elephant tusks underneath their dead leader's feet in the grave.

[183] One of the most important Hindu deities, the elephant-headed Ganesha, is ranked equal with the supreme gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma in some traditions.

Other elephant heroes given human qualities include Jean de Brunhoff's Babar, David McKee's Elmer, and Dr. Seuss's Horton.