Why do some elephants have very large ears?
There are two kinds of elephants: Asian elephants, with ears that are rather small and African elephants, with ears that are enormous. They are closely related, but evolved differently. I think the difference is that the climate for Asian elephants includes a lot of shady jungle, and they don’t need as much surface area for cooling as the African elephants do, who spend time in the jungle, but also in the sunny veldt and near-desert areas. (As everyone else has explained, the amount of surface area, along with flapping, means the elephants can expose their shallow blood vessels in their ears to the motion of the air, which cools the blood in the ears, and then brings down the whole body temperature when that blood returns to the animal’s core.) Hope this helps!
