Elephant eye

**** Full view for best detail! ****

African elephant

Milwaukee County Zoo
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Comments: Usually, I like to list the scientific names of the animals that I've photographed, but I ran into a stumper here. I made this capture at the Milwaukee zoo and knew that I would remember that it was an African elephant (as opposed to the Asian elephant), but when I got home and started doing my research, I made a discovery: there are more than one kind of African elephant. According to Wikipedia, it is now argued that the African elephant can be considered two different species. The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) used to be considered the primary classification. Until recently, the African forest elephant was simply thought to be a subspecies, but some scientists have split it into its own species, Loxodonta cyclotis. The main differences have to do with mandible size and shape, over-all size, and number of toenails. I won't lie... I wasn't looking at the elephants' feet.

Regardless, though I think elephants are -- in general -- majestic animals, their eyes creep me out. Yikes.

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT + Rokunar 2X teleconverter + Tamron EF 70-200mm f2.8 lens + Adobe Photoshop 7 & Lightroom 1