Which is the largest land animal?

The African elephant is the largest animal on land, with bulls reaching six tonnes or more. Everything about it is shaped by carrying that weight. The legs are columnar, positioned almost directly under the body so bone rather than muscle bears the load, and the feet sit on a fatty pad that spreads the pressure, which is why an animal this heavy walks almost silently. Size brings a heat problem too, since a large body produces plenty of heat but has relatively little surface to shed it through, and the enormous ears solve that: they are laced with blood vessels and flapping them cools the blood passing through. The trunk is a fusion of nose and upper lip containing thousands of muscle units and no bone, precise enough to pick up a single seed and strong enough to break branches. Elephants live in herds led by an older female whose memory of water sources guides the group.

Elephants communicate over long distances with low-frequency rumbles below the range of human hearing.