What genus contains the Asian elephant?

The genus containing the Asian elephant is Elephas.

The living Asian elephant is Elephas maximus, and it is currently the only living species in the genus Elephas. It ranges across parts of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, although habitat loss and fragmentation have greatly reduced and divided its populations.

Elephas has a deeper evolutionary history than the single modern species suggests. Fossil species assigned to the genus lived in Africa and Asia, and genetic studies place Asian elephants closer to mammoths (Mammuthus) than to African elephants, which belong to Loxodonta. The lineage that produced modern Asian elephants developed distinctive skull and molar characteristics over millions of years.

The species includes recognized subspecies such as the Indian, Sri Lankan, and Sumatran elephants. A frequent mistake is to use “Elephas” as a general name for every elephant; it specifically identifies the Asian-elephant genus, not African elephants or mammoths.