Editing Elephant (section)

===Warfare===
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{{Main|War elephant}}
{{See also|Execution by elephant}}
[[File:Schlacht bei Zama Gemälde H P Motte.jpg|thumb|[[Battle of Zama]] by [[Henri-Paul Motte]], 1890]]
Historically, elephants were considered formidable instruments of war. They were described in [[Sanskrit]] texts as far back as 1500 BC. From South Asia, the use of elephants in warfare spread west to Persia<ref name=Shoshani146 /> and east to Southeast Asia.<ref name=SEA /> The Persians used them during the [[Achaemenid Empire]] (between the 6th and 4th centuries BC)<ref name=Shoshani146 /> while Southeast Asian states first used war elephants possibly as early as the 5th century BC and continued to the 20th century.<ref name="SEA">{{cite book|author=Griffin, B.|year=2004|contribution=Elephants: From the Sacred to the Mundane|title=Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor|volume=1 |editor=Gin Ooi, K.|pages=487–489|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-57607-770-2}}</ref> War elephants were also employed in the Mediterranean and North Africa throughout the [[classical antiquity|classical period]] since the reign of [[Ptolemy II Philadelphus|Ptolemy II]] in Egypt. The [[Carthage|Carthaginian]] general [[Hannibal]] famously took African elephants across the [[Alps]] during his war with the Romans and reached the [[Po Valley]] in 218 BC with all of them alive, but died of disease and combat a year later.<ref name="Shoshani146">Wylie (2000), pp. 146–48.</ref>

An elephant's head and sides were equipped with armour, the trunk may have had a sword tied to it and tusks were sometimes covered with sharpened iron or brass. Trained elephants would attack both humans and horses with their tusks. They might have grasped an enemy soldier with the trunk and tossed him to their [[mahout]], or pinned the soldier to the ground and speared him. Some shortcomings of war elephants included their great visibility, which made them easy to target, and limited maneuverability compared to horses. [[Alexander the Great]] achieved victory over armies with war elephants by having his soldiers injure the trunks and legs of the animals which caused them to panic and become uncontrollable.<ref name=Shoshani146 />