Elefanten or Elefant?

[paul.cavalier]

I'm sort of new to this, and although I thought I was going quite well, I stumbled across something that is really confusing me. I'm hoping someone out there far more educated on the German language can help me understand this a little better.

If I was to translate "She has an elephant", I would have said "Sie hat einen Elefant", yet a number of questions on this site suggest that it is actually "Sie hat einen Elefanten", which I would have taken as "She has an elephants"... Am I missing something here? Thanks in advance!

[TeamPeaceFight]

It's because in all non-nominative forms, Elefant is Elefanten.

Source: http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Elefant

[KyleGoetz]

This doesn't clear things up. Duolingo says both Elefant and Elefanten are acceptable in the accusative. I've seen it multiple times at this point on the site.

[paul.cavalier]

Vielen dank! That's really helpful. Pretty tricky language this one!

[Krokodyl]

An elephant drinks = Ein Elefant trinkt.

Elefant is subject ie nominative case thus "Ein Elefant"

She has an elephant = Sie hat einen Elefanten.

Elefant is object ie accusative case thus "einen Elefanten"

As correctly stated before : "in all non-nominative forms, Elefant is Elefanten."
In the wiki page you can see all cases in the table on the right for singular plural.