The elephant is the largest land mammal. The gestation period is 660 days or 22 months. An adult bull elephant can weigh 6 metric tonnes. The larges, african elephants can stand up to 4 meters high at the shoulder. A 20 kilogram heart pumps 450 litres of blood around the body for sixty years. The heart beats at 28 beats per minute compared to 70 per minute for a human and 500 per minute for a mouse. The lifespan is around 60-70 years but, like humans, is quite variable depending on factors such as disease, accident and predation by humans .

Elephants have a complex social structure with the females dominating. The calves are entirely dependent on their mother for up to five years. Once they reach ten years of age, the bull elephants are mature enough to begin living independently away from the matriarchal group. As they get older, they live alone or with other males. They rejoin the matriarchal groups when a cow is in oestrous to mate.

Conception results in a fertilised egg that undergoes initial cleavage and early embryonic development that is very similar to humans or even mice. The development of the trunk and the solid pillar-like legs occurs around 12 to 14 weeks and by the time the foetus has been in the womb for 22 months it weighs 100 to 120 kilograms. The calf stands a little under a meter high when born.

The shots used in this sequence and others like it can be founf in The David Barlow Film Archive at:

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