Today is Elephant Appreciation Solar day — here are eighteen surprising facts about elephants

elephant

An elephant and her baby.
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  • Elephant Appreciation Twenty-four hours is September 22.
  • To celebrate, we picked 18 fun facts nigh the largest state mammal.
  • For example, they "hug" their trunks to say hello to each other.
  • Visit Insider'due south homepage for more stories.

While Elephant Appreciation 24-hour interval is September 22, it doesn't mean that we can't celebrate these gentle giants every other day of the twelvemonth.

Elephants are some of the smartest and near compassionate animals on the planet, and they're e'er a large draw at the zoo ... but how much do you really know about them?

From their v-inch eyelashes to their 22-month pregnancies, here are 18 things you probably never knew almost elephants.

An elephant's torso weighs 400 pounds, just it can option up things as pocket-size equally a single grain of rice.

Tourist Nicki Kelk gets her lid taken off her head past a baby elephant at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, Thailand.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Elephants use their trunk for everything! Drinking, eating, smelling, and communicating are all done past the trunk.

Elephants tin recognize themselves in the mirror. They join humans, apes, and dolphins as the only animals with cocky awareness.

They tin can see themselves in a mirror.
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"This would seem to be a trait common to and independently evolved by animals with big, complex brains, circuitous social lives and known capacities for empathy and altruism, even though the animals all have very different kinds of brains," researcher Dana Reiss told LiveScience.

They are afraid of bees. Farmers even utilize beehives to deter elephants from coming onto their land.

An elephant with Mountain Kilimanjaro in the background.
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Some farms in Asia and Africa are using bees instead of life-threatening electric fences, the New York Times reported.

Elephants can have babies until they're 50 years onetime.

A 3-twenty-four hour period-old elephant plays with his mother in their enclosure at the Zoological Garden in Berlin, Germany.
Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Similarly to humans, giving nascency at that historic period is rare, but some elephants have even given birth in their 60s.

Elephants are significant for 22 months — it's the longest gestation period of any mammal.

A new baby Asian elephant is seen beside an developed on July 28, 2009.
Matt Dunham/AP Images

And their menstrual bike lasts from 3 to four months, as opposed to the 28-day wheel in humans. That means they only have the possibility of getting significant three or four times per yr.

Elephants are born blind.

A baby Asian elephant, built-in only 2 days before, gets used to his wobbly legs while exploring his enclosure in Berlin.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

They also suck their trunks for comfort, similar humans suck their thumbs.

They also weigh up to 260 pounds at nativity.

A 5-month-onetime orphaned elephant called Tembo plays with his keeper in Mkomazi, Tanzania.
Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Imagine giving birth tothat.

The oldest elephant lived to be 86.

An elephant in Assam, India.
Anuwar Ali Hazarika/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

His name was Lin Wang, and he was drafted into the Japanese ground forces during Globe War II.

They "hug" their trunks to say hello to each other.

A caretaker looks on every bit vii-yr-old elephant Laxmi rubs trunks with her girl, 13-month-old Rani.
Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Elephants, they're just like us.

Elephants have no demand for mascara — their eyelashes tin be upwards to 5 inches long.

An elephant eye.
Anupam Nath/AP Images

In fact, they accept the longest eyelashes of any animal in the globe.

They are extremely emotional creatures — elephants even grieve lost family members.

A herd of Asiatic wild elephants gather at a national park in Minneriya, Sri Lanka.
Chamila Karunarathne/AP Images

When a mother loses their infant, they've been known to become through a depressive state, and even drag the body of their baby along behind them for days.

The elephant's closest living relative is the hyrax, which resemble "a large guinea pig with a grouchy-looking overbite."

A rock hyrax.
Nicole Kwiatkowski/Shutterstock

Elephant, rock hyraxes, and manatees all "descend from a common hoofed antecedent," according to The Dodo.

African bush-league elephants are the largest state animals in the globe — they can weigh up to 14,000 pounds.

An elephant walks at the Pafuri game reserve in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

That's 7 tons.

Elephants can be trained to fight fires by conveying crews and equipment into remote areas, like they did in Republic of indonesia in 2015.

Forestry officials ride on the back of elephants every bit they patrol an area affected past woods fire in Siak, Riau province, Indonesia.
Rony Muharrman/AP Images

In Republic of indonesia, they helped carry crews and equipment through difficult terrain, Business Insider reported.

They utilize their trunks every bit snorkels when they swim.

An elephant swimming.
Matt King/Getty Images

They know how to swim naturally. According to Wild Animal Park, "The just mammals that take to learn to swim are humans and the primates."

They tin can spend 16 hours a mean solar day eating.

An elephant eating grass.
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Sounds like the life.

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