See the Size and Strength of an Enormous Elephant as Rips Down a Tree with Its Trunk

Having Trouble Watching? Unfortunately sometimes creators disable or remove their video after we publish. Try to Watch on YouTube

Written by Kirstin Harrington

Updated: October 20, 2023

Share on:

Continue reading for our analysis...

Elephant
© Volodymyr Burdiak/Shutterstock.com

Although elephants are behemoth creatures, often weighing up to 13,000 pounds, they’re still adorable. One of these enormous elephants was caught on its hind legs in the wild. The elephant in the video included below is reaching its trunk up toward a tree branch.

With a quick pull, the enormous elephant is able to seamlessly tear down the branch with ease. Elephants are generally seen as gentle giants, yet they aren’t always the amenable animals that people think of them as being. 

Wild Female Asian Elephant in Yok Don National Park, Vietnam

There are three living species of elephants.

©DorSteffen/Shutterstock.com

Elephants are among the most fascinating animals since they are intelligent enough to have sophisticated emotions and intricate social structures. These tusked animals possess incredible raw power that few other creatures can even come close to matching. 

They aren’t the strongest animals on the planet, but they are the strongest land animals that have ever walked the earth, pound for pound.

Understanding Elephant Strength

Ivory elephant tusks are stronger than most people assume. Elephants have a range of uses for their tusks. They employ them for safety, tree felling, bark removal, and other purposes. The curved teeth endure considerable pressure. Fortunately, they are designed to manage it.

Tusks can withstand applied forces of up to 14,000 PSI. That’s a bending force of 14,000 pounds per square inch! The majority of individuals never even consider the likelihood of an elephant bite!

The strength of an elephant’s bite is not well understood. An elephant’s bite typically produces 2,200 PSI.  Additionally, it has greater strength than dangerous predators like lions and jaguars! 

Front view of elephant with short tusks

Elephants start growing tusks around two years old.

©Ocean Eloy/Shutterstock.com

Elephants are not dependent just on the power of their bites to defend themselves. That’s what their trunk and tusks are for! The trunk serves many purposes for the animal. Elephants utilize it as both a tool for eating and a prosthetic arm. The trunk alone has more than 150,000 muscles. It goes without saying that it’s quite tense! 

The trunk of an elephant can be used as a tool for hitting. When they do, they have a maximum strength of 6,000 pound-feet.

Do You Even Lift?

elephant

Elephants are huge animals. and age can have either a positive or negative impact on lifting.

©JohnEGoodwin/Shutterstock.com

Age and general health can have a positive or negative impact on an elephant’s ability to lift. The colossal power of certain stronger male elephants, who can frequently carry more than 2,000 pounds on their back, is quite remarkable. 

Enormous elephants can typically support 10% of their weight on just their rear legs. That’s how we can witness such a large animal standing on its hind legs to tear down the branch. The majority of elephants can lift about half of their weight when they are lying down.


Share this post on:
About the Author

Kirstin is a writer at A-Z Animals primarily covering animals, news topics, fun places, and helpful tips. Kirstin has been writing on a variety of topics for over five years. She has her real estate license, along with an associates degree in another field. A resident of Minnesota, Kirstin treats her two cats (Spook and Finlay) like the children they are. She never misses an opportunity to explore a thrift store with a coffee in hand, especially if it’s a cold autumn day!

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us? Contact the AZ Animals editorial team.