Every african bush elephant is a stack of tissues that must agree under season, prey and human pressure.
Meters below repeat the six atlas scores as gauges; they are relative marks, not laboratory certificates.
Systems
Support and integument
Pillar legs, a trunk of tens of thousands of muscle units, and tusks that are incisors. Heat dumps through ears; the brain is large and long-memoried.
Feeding apparatus
A daily mass of grass, browse and bark. Engineers open woodland and dig wells that other species drink -- the ecological-role reason. The feeding kit sets the ecological-role score relative to the other 23 types.
Respiration and circulation
Gas exchange and blood flow are tuned to the african bush elephant energy budget -- dive, hover, sprint or bulk browse -- not to a generic vertebrate template.
Senses and neural control
Infrasound rumbles, smell, and a trunk that is a hand. Musth rewrites male social smell.
Reproduction and ontogeny
Replacement rate is the hidden resilience number. Ivory price, fences, and maize. A full park does not cancel an EN assessment.
Thermoregulation and salt/water
Climate and osmoregulation bound where a african bush elephant can close its daily budget. Field sites in the English-speaking world still measure that envelope first.
Relative meters
Hotspots
Primary weapon or tool
The bill, teeth, trunk, pouch or talon that field guides name first -- and that trade or conflict usually targets.
Energy store
Fat, cache, crop or bamboo hours that decide whether a season closes.
Natal or breeding site
A redd, eyrie, den, anemone or ice lair -- often a single-point risk (Izumi, Natron, Gir).
Sensory organ
Infrasound rumbles, smell, and a trunk that is a hand. Musth rewrites male social smell.
Human interface
Hunt, tourism, film or quota -- the surface where african bush elephant biology meets English-language law.
Tissues & materials
Keratin and integument
Feathers, fur, baleen or skin plates -- tissues, not metals. Moult and wear are the maintenance cycle.
Bone and cartilage
Load paths for stoop, lunge, knuckle-walk or hover. Marrow and pneumatic bone differ by family.
Muscle and tendon
The expensive tissue that speed and intelligence scores only hint at.
Fat, oil and glycogen
Stores that migration, fast and lactation spend. A market for those stores (oil, ivory, fin) is a historical threat.
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