• Mother and baby"Baby Elephant" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: wwarby (William Warby) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
  
  

Time Frame

• The baby stage lasts from birth until the elephant is weaned from his mother's milk; this occurs between age 5 and 10. Adolescence begins with weaning and ends at age 17, when the elephant reaches sexual maturity. Adulthood begins at age 18.
  
  

Features

• Babies are entirely dependent upon their mothers. The mother feeds, cleans and assists in migration until age 3 to 5, when it will begin learn independence. Sexual maturity of the adolescent is reached between ages 8 and 13. Adolescent elephants do not engage in mating, but rather find their place in the herd or drift to another.
  
  

Function

• Adult elephants begin mating around age 20 and stop reproducing around age 50. Babies are born just before the start of the wet season, when the plants are softer and easier to chew.
  
  

Fun Fact

• Elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal: 22 months.
  
  

Considerations

• Elephants experience many of the same ailments as humans in old age, including menopause, cardiovascular disease and arthritis.