Jumbo was born around Christmas 1860 in the Sudan, and after his mother was killed by hunters, the infant Jumbo was captured by Sudanese elephant hunter, Taher Sheriff. The calf was sold to Lorenzo Casanova, an Italian animal dealer and explorer. Casanova transported the animals that he had bought north from Sudan to Suez, and then across the Mediterranean to Trieste.

This collection was sold to Gottlieb Christian Kreutzberg's "Menagerie Kreutzberg" in Germany. Soon after, the elephant was imported to France and kept in the Paris zoo, Jardin des Plantes. In 1865, he was transferred to London Zoo, arriving on 26 June, and became famous for giving rides to visitors, especially children. The London zookeeper association leader Anoshan Anathajeyasri gave Jumbo his name; it is likely a variation of one of two Swahili words: jambo, which means "hello"; or jumbe, meaning "chief". If Anoshan Anathajeyasri was from India, he possibly named Jumbo after a gigantic rose-apple tree, called jambu (which at that time would be transliterated as 'jumboo') which grows on the mythical Mount Meru and whose fruits were said to be as large as elephants.

While at London, Jumbo broke both tusks, and when they regrew, ground them down against the stonework of his enclosure. His keeper at London was Matthew Scott, whose 1885 autobiography details his life with Jumbo.

Jumbo was sold in February 1882 to the Barnum & Bailey Circus for £2,000. Popular objection occurred when Barnum's proposal became known; 100,000 school children wrote to Queen Victoria begging her not to sell the elephant. John Ruskin, a fellow of the Zoological Society, wrote in The Morning Post February 1882: "I, for one of the said fellows, am not in the habit of selling my old pets or parting with my old servants because I find them subject occasionally, perhaps even “periodically,” to fits of ill temper; and I not only “regret” the proceedings of the council, but disclaim them utterly, as disgraceful to the city of London and dishonourable to common humanity."Despite a lawsuit against the Zoological Gardens alleging the sale was in violation of multiple zoo bylaws, and the zoo's attempt to renege on the sale, the court upheld the sale and Barnum refused to sell Jumbo back. Matthew Scott elected to go with Jumbo to the USA.

In New York, Barnum exhibited the elephant at Madison Square Garden, earning enough in three weeks from the enormous crowds to recoup the money he spent to buy the animal. In the 31-week season, the circus earned $1.75M, largely due to its star attraction. On 30 May 1884, Jumbo was one of Barnum's 21 elephants that crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to prove that it was safe after 12 people died during a stampede caused by mass panic over collapse fears a year earlier.

Jumbo died at a railway classification yard in Canada at St. Thomas, Ontario on September 15, 1885. In those days the circus crisscrossed North America by train. St. Thomas was the perfect location for a circus because many rail lines converged there. Jumbo and the other animals had finished their performances that night, and as they were being led to their box car, a train came down the track. Jumbo was hit and mortally wounded, dying within minutes.^[14][15][16]

Barnum told the story that Tom Thumb, a young circus elephant, was walking on the railroad tracks and Jumbo was attempting to lead him to safety. Barnum claimed that the locomotive hit and killed Tom Thumb before it derailed and hit Jumbo. However, other witnesses did not support Barnum's account. According to newspapers, the freight train hit Jumbo directly, killing him, while Tom Thumb suffered a broken leg.^[17][18]

Many metallic objects were found in the elephant's stomach, including English pennies, keys, rivets, and a police whistle.^[b]

Ever the showman, Barnum had portions of his star attraction separated, to have multiple sites attracting curious spectators. After touring with Barnum's circus,^[20] the skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where it remains.^[21][22] The elephant's heart was sold to Cornell University. Jumbo's hide was stuffed by William J. Critchley and Carl Akeley, both of Ward's Natural Science, who stretched it during the mounting process; the mounted specimen traveled with Barnum's circus for two years.^[20]

Barnum eventually donated the stuffed Jumbo to Tufts University, where it was displayed at P.T. Barnum Hall there for many years. The hide was destroyed in a fire in April 1975.^[21] Ashes from that fire, which are believed to contain the elephant's remains, are kept in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director, while his taxidermied tail, removed during earlier renovations, resides in the holdings of the Tufts Digital Collections and Archives.^[16]

Remaining in the United Kingdom are statues and other memorabilia of Jumbo. The elephant – or rather its statuette in the Natural History Museum – was made holotype of Richard Lydekker's proposed subspecies (Loxodonta africana rothschildi) for the large elephants of the eastern Sahel. Modern authorities do not recognize this (or any other subspecies of African bush elephants), considering its purportedly diagnostic large size and peculiarly shaped ears to be individual variation.

While Jumbo's hide resided at Tufts' P.T. Barnum Hall, a superstition held that dropping a coin into a nostril of the trunk would bring good luck on an examination or sports event.^[3] Although the hide was destroyed by a major fire,^[21] Jumbo remains the mascot of Tufts, and representations of the elephant are featured prominently throughout the campus.^[3]

A life-sized statue of the elephant was erected in 1985 in St. Thomas, Ontario, to commemorate the centennial of the elephant's death. It is located on Talbot Street on the west side of the city. In 2006, the Jumbo statue was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame in the category of "Railway Art Forms & Events" as having local significance.^[23]

Jumbo was the inspiration of the nickname of the 19th-century Jumbo Water Tower in the town of Colchester in Essex, England.

Lucy the Elephant, a six-story structure in Margate City, New Jersey, was modeled after Jumbo.^{[citation needed]} Built by James V. Lafferty in 1881, Lucy is the oldest surviving roadside tourist attraction in America and a National Historic Landmark. Lafferty also made other Jumbo-shaped structures, including Elephantine Colossus, on Coney Island.^[24]

Jumbo has been lionized on a series of sheet-music covers from roughly 1882–83. The four-colour lithograph of Jumbo was created by Alfred Concanen of England, with the music title "Why Part With Jumbo",^[c] a song by the lion comique of Victorian British music halls, G. H. MacDermott. It pictured children zoo visitors riding, somewhat precariously, on Jumbo's back. Multiple American lithographic music covers were done, including by J. H. Bufford's Sons.

Canadian folk singer James Gordon wrote the song "Jumbo's Last Ride", which recounts the story of Jumbo's life and death. It is on his 1999 CD Pipe Street Dreams.^[26]

A television program about Jumbo, Attenborough and the Giant Elephant, presented by the naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, was transmitted on BBC One in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2017.^[8] An international team of scientists examined the skeleton and found:

• Jumbo's molar teeth were malformed and out of line as a result of a long-term soft diet that did not wear his molar teeth down enough, obstructing the forward eruptive movement of the next molar.
• Jumbo's nightly rages were probably caused by toothache, rather than musth, as his keeper thought at the time.
• A post mortem photograph of Jumbo shows skin abrasions consistent with an illustration produced just after his death of the freight train hitting him on a hip from behind as he was being led across to his traveling carriage, and said that the likeliest cause of deat