Asian elephant
The Asian elephant ("Elephas maximus"), also called Asiatic elephant, is the only living species of the genus "Elephas" and is distributed in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India and Nepal in the west to Borneo in the south. Three subspecies are recognised—"E. m. maximus" from Sri Lanka, "E. m. indicus" from mainland Asia and "E. m. sumatranus" from the island of Sumatra. The Asian elephant is the largest living land animal in Asia.
Execution by elephant
Elephants are widely reported to have been used to carry out executions in Southeast Asia, and were used in Burma and Malaysia from the earliest historical times as well as in the kingdom of Champa on the other side of the Indochinese Peninsula. In Siam, elephants were trained to throw the condemned into the air before trampling them to death. Alexander Hamilton provides the following account from Siam: