Species, also called Asiatic elephant, belonging to the family of elephants, named by Carl Linnaeus, 1758.
Recognized subspecies:
Asian elephant is a species belonging to the family of elephants (Elephantidae), which is included in the mammal order Proboscidea. It was formerly called Indian elephant, which is a confusing name, since Asian elephants once distributed from Tigris and Euphrates Valleys of Syria and Iraq to the yellow river of China and South to Sumatra (Daniel, 1995). They presently occur in 13 asian countries, from west India , to southern China, and in southeast from the malay peninsula to the islands Sumatra and Borneo, why "Indian" is unappropiate, and the name "Indian elephant" even if only used for the Indian subspecies is also not totally relevant, since this subspecies covers all elephants living on Asian mainland.
The straight-tusked elephant, an extinct elephant whose closest extant relative is the African forest elephant, interbred with the Asian elephant, as recovered DNA has shown.(Callaway, Elephant history rewritten by ancient genomes)
Since the Asian elephant live in dense forest and djungles, is it much more difficult to estimate the present individual population number, why official population numbers follow a minimum and maximum estimation, and a suggested average.
Note: My total mean number differ from Gajahs total mean of 43 445, since in their calculation (obviously a total mean with and sum total-min + sum total-max / 2?), they used 0 (zero) in the minimum estimation for Thailand, calculation, while, even if Min values is lacking (NA), for sure, 0 does not reflect a realistic Min value. I simply made a mean total, by adding all records in the right mean column.
: The Asian Elephant: An Action Plan for Its Conservation by Charles Santiapillai, Peter Jackson, Iucn, Ssc Asian Elephant Specialist Group.