How do different types of elephants differ?

Looking closer, you can see that there is a huge difference between the African and the Asian elephants. Actually they resemble each other only from a distance by their outward appearance. Both are big, have a trunk, a tail and partly tusks.

What are the differences between African and Asian elephants?

	African elephant (Loxodonta africana)	Asian elephant (Elephas maximus)
Weight	4000 - 7000 kg	3000 - 6000 kg
Shoulder height	3 - 4 Meter	2 - 3.5 Meter
Skin	More wrinkled	Smoother
Number of ribs	Up to 21 pairs	Up to 20 pairs
Highest point	On the shoulder	On the back
Size of the ears	Bigger, reach up over the neck	Smaller, do not reach over the neck
Shape of the back	Concave	Convex or straight
Shape of the belly	Diagonally downward in the direction of the hind legs	Either almost straight or sagging in the middle
Shape of the head	Not crumpled from the front to the back, no humped structures, no dent	Crumpled from the front to the back, with humped structures on the top of the head, forehead dented
Teeth	Lamella profile of the molars diamond-shaped	Lamella profile of the molars strongly compressed
Tusks	Existing with both sexes. Bigger with the males	Males in many cases having tusks. Females having only rudimentary or no tusks
Lower lip	short and round	long and taper
Food	Mainly leaves	Mainly grass
Trunk	With more rings, less hard	With less rings, harder
Trunk end	With two fingers	With one finger
Toenails	Foreleg 4 or rarely 5 Hind leg 3 or rarely 4	Foreleg 5 Hind leg 4 or rarely 5

Are there half-breeds?

The genetic differences however are so great that they actually cannot be interbred.
The only known crossbreed between an African and an Asian elephant was born in the Chester zoo in 1978. The bull calf "Motty" died, despite intensive nursing care, two weeks after its birth. Its father was the African bull "Jumbolino" and its mother the Asian elephant cow "Sheba".
More details about Motty: www.hybridelephant.com/motty.html

Is keeping African elephants more difficult?

The rumour is wrong that Asian elephants would be easier to keep in zoos or circuses than African elephants.
Both elephant species live in various circuses and zoos. The only thing that rendered the Asian elephants better known as working, zoo and circus elephants is the Asian tradition of catching and taming wild elephants.
So the most famous zoo and circus elephant "Jumbo" was a african bull.

When the Belgians in colonial times intended to stub the jungle of Belgian Congo, they employed Indian mahouts, who successfully caught and trained the African elephants according to the Asian method. Nowadays safaris on the backs of African riding elephants become more and more popular in Africa.