Elephants in War

Elephants Were Used in Wars for Thousands of Years!

For thousands of years, animals have been used in war. As recently as  World War Two (1939 to 1945), some countries such as Germany and Russia used hundreds of thousands of horses in addition to tanks, planes and trucks! Even dogs and birds have been used in war.

A German cannon being pulled by horses in World War Two.

                     Later, German horses  would suffer greatly during the terrible Russian winter.

A war elephant is an elephant that is trained and guided by humans for fighting enemy armies. A wild elephant would be captured and training it would usually involved hurting it as well as rewarding it until it obeyed its rider's commands. 

Elephants started to be used in battles about 2,500 years ago. The war elephant's main use was to charge (run towards) the enemy and make fear among enemy soldiers. Soldiers would ride on the elephant's back and shoot arrows and spears at the enemy. Elephants would also scare the horses in enemy armies which had never seen elephants. They were used in wars for a long time in some parts of the world. They could be important in winning battles, although most battles in the ancient world did not have elephants. 

There were problems, though: war elephants could be hurt or scared by fire, arrows, and the blood and noise of a battle - that noise included thousands of men and horses screaming in pain, fear, and anger, and the clash of swords. Sometimes when the elephants got scared and angry, their riders lost control of them and the elephants would run wildly around the battlefield. 

When this happened (today it is called "running amok"), some elephants would trample (step on and crush) and kill anyone in their way, not just enemy soldiers but soldiers in their own army. The elephant's rider would then have to kill the elephant by hammering a big spike into the elephant's neck so that the animal would not kill soldiers in its own army.

Another problem is that elephants eat lots of food -- up to 150 kg of grass and other plants a day -- and this food had to be brought along with the army. They also need people to look after them and could get sick or hurt in battle. Also, elephants do not do well in cold weather. Finally, elephants cost a lot of money.

War elephants played an important role in several battles in ancient history, especially in ancient India. Although elephants were not used often in Ancient China, they were used in armies of historical kingdoms in Southeast Asia. 

The Mediterranean Sea area - Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (218 BC)

They were also used in ancient Persia and in the Mediterranean world within armies of Macedon, Hellenistic Greek states, the Roman Republic and later Empire, and Ancient Carthage in North Africa. 

In some parts of the world, they were used on the battlefield throughout the Medieval era (about AD 600 to AD 1400) . However, after that, they were not used much because of the invention of firearms (guns) and other gunpowder weaponry (cannons etc.) in early modern warfare. After this, war elephants were only used in non-combat engineering and labor roles, as well as being used for minor ceremonial uses (parades and other events). 

Some Examples of the Use of War Elephants

A carving from India made sometime between 600 BC to 400 BC showing war elephants

 

Chandragupta Maurya (321–297 BC), formed the Maurya Empire in India, the largest empire to exist in South Asia. When his empire was very large, Chandragupta is said to have had an army of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry (soldiers who fought on horses), 8,000 chariots and 9,000 war elephants, although we do not know if these numbers are right. 

A depiction of war elephants from an Indian army attacking a Greek army led by Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, located in what is now Pakistan (326 BC), (painting by Andre Castaigne)

The most famous use of war elephants was by Hannibal, a general who was from the empire of Carthage, which included parts of North Africa and southern and eastern Spain (see the map of the Mediterranean area in 218 BC above). He lived about 2,200 years ago, and he brought 37 war elephants with his army from what is now Spain when he went to war against the Romans in Italy.

War elephants depicted in Hannibal crossing the Rhône River,  a river in what is now southern France, 218 BC. Painting by Henri Motte (1878)

A modern painting of Hannibal's army in the snow crossing the Alps on its way to Italy to fight the Romans in 218 BC. 

The journey that Hannibal and his army took from Cartagena in Spain to the River Trebia in northern Italy was about 1,600 km and might have taken 4 months or more. When the Roman soldiers saw the elephants, they and their horses were so scared that Hannibal won a great victory. 

However, just after the battle near the River Trebia in December, almost all of the elephants had died from the long, hard trip, and so Hannibal continued the war in Italy for many years without any elephants. Battles, sickness, and cold and snow in the Alps killed them.

War elephants were also used in Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam). A Thai war elephant as it might have looked around 1750 (from a modern movie)

Armor for a war elephant from India. It was made sometime between the years 1600 to 1700. This armor is composed of 5,840 plates of metal and weighs 118 kg, some plates are missing and originally the total number would be 8,439 and weigh 159 kg! The tusk swords that accompany this armor (not on display) weigh in at 10 kg. 

The Danger to Elephants Today

There are no elephants in North Africa today. They are extinct there, mainly because they were killed for their ivory tusks. The ivory trade is illegal in most countries, but poachers still kill elephants for their tusks, which are illegally sold for a lot of money.

Elephant tusks are turned into works of art

Elephant tusks are made of ivory

Click here for pictures of ivory carvings made from elephant tusks

From the World Wildlife Fund:

African elephant populations have fallen from an estimated 12 million a century ago to some 400,000. In recent years, at least 20,000 elephants have been killed in Africa each year for their tusks. African forest elephants have been the worst hit. Their populations declined by 62% between 2002-2011 and they have lost 30% of their geographical range, with African savanna elephants declining by 30% between 2007-2014.

 This dramatic decline has continued and even accelerated with cumulative losses of up to 90% in some landscapes between 2011 and 2015. Today, the greatest threat to African elephants is wildlife crime, primarily poaching for the illegal ivory trade, while the greatest threat to Asian elephants is habitat loss, which results in human-elephant conflict. (Link to more World Wildlife Fund elephant information)

• Link to "About Elephants" (Elephant Conservation)
• Link to Wikipedia article on War Elephants