How do elephants get so big?

The heaviest recorded modern day elephant was an African elephant which weighed 12 tons. It was a bull elephant shot dead in Angola, in 1974.

Asian elephants are huge, but are generally smaller than the African savanna species. Asian elephants grow up to 21 feet long, stand up to ten feet tall, and weigh up to 11,000 pounds. Females reach about eight and a half feet tall and weigh less than males.