Even though we know that elephants are important and that they’re very large (they’re the largest land animals, by far!), here’s some fun facts that will help truly put them into perspective:

🐘 African elephants can weigh up to 23,000 pounds! That’s equal to about 8 Honda Civics! To get an idea of just how large elephants are, the next largest animals are: Asian elephants (11,900 pounds), the White Rhinoceros (6,000 pounds), and Hippopotamuses (7,000 pounds). In fact, African elephants can eat up to 600 pounds of plants and vegetation in one day!

🐘 African elephants can stand up to 13 feet tall! They’re the second tallest land animal after Giraffes, which can reach 19 feet tall. Considering their size, it’s no surprise that African elephants have the longest pregnancy of any animal, lasting 22 months! When the calves are born, they are 3 feet tall and can weigh up to 300 pounds! The next longest pregnancy of any animal is the sperm whale, which lasts 18 months.

🐘 Their trunk contains more than 40,000 muscles! For comparison, the entire human body only has 600 muscles! With its trunk, the elephant can both wield enormous power and pick up something as small as a single blade of grass. Another cool fact is that an elephant can hold up to 2 gallons of water in its trunk!

🐘 Elephant tusks are actually their incisor teeth! These teeth continue to grow their entire lives. Elephants use their tusks for digging, fighting, stripping tree bark, and lifting heavy loads - they are important tools and weapons!

🐘 And finally - elephants can use their feet to “hear”! They have specialized sensors in their feet called Pacinian corpuscles, which help elephants detect the smallest vibrations in the ground. They can use this to detect potential threats, as well as to communicate with other elephants over extremely long distances (more than 15 miles!) through low-frequency rumbles.

Aren't elephants amazing? Which fact was your favorite? 🐘

Did you know that bananas are radioactive?

Bananas release potassium-40, which is a naturally occurring isotype. But don’t worry: a single banana only emits around 0.1 microsieverts of radiation. A lethal dose is 4-5 sieverts, meaning you would need to eat 40-50 million bananas to reach the dose. But honestly, if you’re eating that many bananas, you should be more worried about how much potassium you’re eating more than the radioactivity!

Is the Great Wall of China visible from space?

The Great Wall of China is more than 13,000 miles long, and the newest parts of the wall (built during the Ming Dynasty, from 1368-1644) average 33 feet tall and 15 feet wide! If stretched in a straight line, it would reach halfway around the world!

However, although it’s been widely quoted as being the only man-made structure visible from outer space, that’s actually not true. Because the wall is relatively narrow, it’s not visible with the naked eye. However, there are many other man-made structures that are visible from outer space, including city lights!

Do you know how important elephants are to their environment? They are a keystone species! A keystone species is a species (a group of animals) that has a disproportionally large impact on its environment. Elephants are important for several reasons:

Many of the other surrounding plants and animals are dependent on elephants, which is what makes elephants so important to their environment and to us! Other examples of keystone species include the gray wolf, the sea otter, beavers, and bees!

The goal of sudoku is to fill the grid so that each row and each column contains all the digits from 1 to 9. Also, each of the nine 3 × 3 grids should also contain all the digits from 1 to 9. Good luck!