Elephants are the biggest land animals alive today.For a very long time, elephants have helped people.They have carried things,taken people from place to place,and moved huge trees.In wartime they have been used as 'living tanks'
Although people have worked with elephants for long time,some people have wrong ideas about them.Some people think,for example,that it is not easy to hurt an elephant because it has very thick skin.This is not the truth .Although an elephant's kin is thick sometimes as thick as 2.5 centimetres-a needle pushed into an elephant's skin will hurt it.
Some people believe elephants are afraid of mice.This is not true either.In fact elephants have such poor eyesight they would usually not see a mouse,even if one came very near them. 'Elephants never forget' is another wrong idea.There is nothing to show that elephants have better memories than other animals.
Finally,there is the idea that when the time comes foe an elephant to die, it goes to some kind of elephant graveyard to die.No one has ever found such a graveyard.What elephant probably do when they are old and sick is find a deep cave somewhere.They stay in it so they will be safe from attack until they get better or-die.
In old Siam,if someone found a white elephant,he gave it to the king because it was unusual.The king then had to keep the animal and feed it even though he had no use for it.