The Indian or South-East-Asiatic elephant is a sub-species if the Asiatic elephant; the other sub-species are: the Sri Lankan, the Sumatran and the Borneo elephant. What few people know is that these three African elephants are actually three different species. It is not always easy to say exactly when creatures belong to different species or to different sub-species. The old idea that it is impossible to crossbreed different species does not always seem to be true. It was only established in 2001 and 2002 by prominent American researchers, that the African elephants can really be divided into three species.

Although they belong to different species, they do however belong to the same family, called ELEPHANTIDAE, and to the larger animal order, the PROBOSCIDIAE.

One of the most memorable differences is that the African species are bigger, but there are further differences. The African elephant has bigger ears. These cover its shoulders, which the Asiatic's do not. The African elephant's back is concave, while the Asiatic's is convex. The front of the Asiatic elephant's head has two domes, while the African's head has an even curvature. At the tip of its trunk the Asiatic elephant has one finger-like structure, while the African has two. The African elephant has four or five toenails on each forefoot, and three, four, or five on each hind foot. The Asiatic has five at the front, and four or five at the back. The African elephant's skin is less smooth and more wrinkled. Only the bulls of the Asiatic elephant have tusks, and not even all of them at that, while both sexes of the African elephant have tusks. The differences between the three African species are not well-known, mainly due to the fact that the bush and the West-African elephant are shy animals that lives in the forests near the equator in West and Central Africa, mainly in the Congo, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. The savannah elephants live in open territory in East and Southern Africa. The bush elephant is usually a bit smaller than the savannah elephant. A grown-up bush elephant is about 2 – 3 metres tall and weighs between 2 and 4.5 tonnes, while the savannah elephant is between 3 and 4 metres tall and weighs between 4 and 7 tonnes. The bush elephant's skin is usually a bit darker and its skull has a different shape. The main differences however are the tusks and the ears. A savannah elephant's tusks are pointed forward, they are thicker and the ivory is white, while the bush elephant's are pointed downward, they are rather straight and the ivory is pink-light brown. The bush elephant has smaller ears: they do not come lower than the neck and they are round, while the savannah elephant's are a bit triangular. This is reflected in the bush elephant's Latin name, which means 'round ear'. All these features make sure that it is rather easy to see the difference.

The West-African elephant has no distinct morphological features, but it is genetically speaking clearly different.

The differences between the three subspecies of Asiatic elephants are smaller. An elephant from Sri Lanka is bigger and one from Borneo is smallest. The Sri Lanka elephant gets more easily white-pink depigmentation on its head and trunk, while this phenomenon is very rare with the Sumatran or Borneo elephant.

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