Pre-industrial emblem
54Heraldry, materia medica or first-fish law met the african bush elephant before film.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed36
Intelligence91
Range43
Resilience17
Cultural impact79
Ecological role97
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Why bush elephant, not African elephant in general?
The taxonomy wiki is African bush elephant. Forest elephants (L. cyclotis) were widely recognised as a separate EN/CR story in the 2021 IUCN assessments.
What did the 1989 ivory ban do?
It collapsed legal international commercial trade. Domestic markets, stockpiles and later one-off sales (2008) kept the argument alive. Poaching did not end in 1989.
Who is Cynthia Moss in this file?
Amboseli Elephant Research Project since 1972 -- matrilines with names and decades of calves, the opposite of an anonymous ivory graph.
Are elephants the highest ecological-role score for a reason?
They open woodland, dig water, disperse seeds and rewrite fire. In this 24-type atlas that engineer role outranks even wolves and whales.
What is musth?
A periodic male state with urine dribble, temporal secretion and aggression. It is physiology, not a mood.
Did Kruger culling end?
Large-scale culling paused in the 1990s. Contraception, range expansion and later density debates replaced it without a final peace.
IUCN: Endangered (2021)
African bush elephant culture is local: the same silhouette is a licence in one country and a logo in another.
Status bars are editorial -- they track how loudly this type spoke in English-language media and law, not a best-species score.
Status through time
Industrial take
68Canneries, ivory, longlines or shikar scaled the take.
Cinema and logo
71A film, book or NGO mark often outran the field paper.
Statute and listing
76ESA, CITES, IWC or national parks made the type a legal object.
Live-cam and tourism
61Streams, jeeps and auctions are the present tense of attention.
Portrayals
Victorian Jumbo1882-85
A circus name that became an adjective.
CITES gavel1989
A ban as a global news object.
Amboseli films1980s-
Named families as a genre.
Ivory seizure photos2010s
Tusks as a customs aesthetic.
Conflict wire stories2020s
Crop-raid deaths as the unromantic lead.
IUCN presser2021
Two species, two cards.
Rituals
Amboseli family updates
Researchers still publish named calves as a census.
Burn piles
Some states burn ivory stock as a rite; others call it waste.
Collar-fit days
Save the Elephants operations as a field liturgy.
Sayings
Keep exploring
More in Wildlife
🐅
Tiger
Asia largest cat — subspecies maps, 1973 Project Tiger, and roughly 4,000 remaining wild animals still frame a century of recovery arithmetic.
Overall 62 🦁Lion
A social pantherine whose prides, Gir relic and 2015 Cecil killing still structure African conservation politics.
Overall 66 🐺Gray wolf
A Holarctic pack hunter whose 1995 Yellowstone return and older Leopold ethics still structure predator politics.
Overall 78 🐼Giant panda
A bamboo specialist whose WWF logo, Wolong quake and 2016 IUCN downlist from EN to VU made a recovery into a brand.
Overall 41 🐻Polar bear
A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.
Overall 56 🦍Gorilla
The atlas type is the western gorilla -- a knuckle-walking ape whose Fossey-era mountain cousins and Koko lab fame split one public name.
Overall 45 🐋Blue whale
The largest animal whose 1966 IWC protection, 1982 moratorium and still-thin Antarctic recovery define a hunted giant.
Overall 65