Passage: The Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Punics began acquiring African elephants for the same purpose, as did Numidia and the Kingdom of Kush. The animal used was the North African elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaohensis) which would become extinct from overexploitation. These animals were smaller, harder to tame, and could not swim deep rivers compared to the Asian elephants used by the Seleucids on the east of the Mediterranean region, particularly Syrian elephants, which stood 2.5–3.5 meters (8.2–11.5 ft) at the shoulder. It is likely that at least some Syrian elephants were traded abroad. The favorite, and perhaps last surviving, elephant of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps was an impressive animal named Surus ("the Syrian"), which may have been of Syrian stock, though the evidence remains ambiguous.Since the late 1940s, a strand of scholarship has argued that the African forest elephants used by Numidia, the Ptolemies and the military of Carthage did not carry howdahs or turrets in combat, perhaps owing to the physical weakness of the species. Some allusions to turrets in ancient literature are certainly anachronistic or poetic invention, but other references are less easily discounted. There is explicit contemporary testimony that the army of Juba I of Numidia included turreted elephants in 46 BC. This is confirmed by the image of a turreted African elephant used on the coinage of Juba II. This also appears to be the case with Ptolemaic armies: Polybius reports that at the battle of Raphia in 217 BC the elephants of Ptolemy IV carried turrets; these elephants were significantly smaller than the Asian elephants fielded by the Seleucids and so presumably African forest elephants. There is also evidence that Carthaginian war elephants were furnished with turrets and howdahs in certain military contexts.Farther south, tribes would have had access to the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana oxyotis). Although much larger than either the African forest elephant or the Asian elephant, these proved difficult to...

Question: What was the elephant's role in Sri Lanka?
mounts for kings