Why Do Elephants Have Trunks?
asks J. Navarrete, a student in Woodside, NY. Imagine life with a trunk: Sniff a friend’s sandwich, then grab it with your nose. Reach for something on a high shelf without standing on a chair. Swim across a pool underwater, using your long nose as a snorkel. There are no bones in an elephant’s trunk, making it as supple as a garden hose. A trunk has more than 40,000 muscles and tendons, and its tip is covered with nerve endings. In addition, there are one or two “fingers” on the tip to grasp small objects. Like a monkey’s tail, a trunk is “prehensile,” and can be wrapped like a rope around an object such as a branch. Unlike a monkey’s trail, an elephant’s trunk can weigh 400 lb. and measure 7 feet long. All of this makes a trunk flexible (it can hoist a log), strong (the log can weigh more than 300 lb.) and precise (it can pick up a penny lying flat on the floor). An elephant’s trunk is the Swiss army knife of animal appendages. A trunk-equipped elephant can: Collect gallons of water,
The elephant uses its trunk in more ways than any animal uses any part of its body. The trunk is both amazingly strong and very delicate. With it, an elephant can pull down a mighty tree or gently take a peanut from a child’s hand. The elephant smells, drinks, and feeds itself with its trunk. No animal has a better nose, and the
Of all the animals that roam the planet, very few are as strong as the elephant; in fact it is said that even a lion would think twice before attacking an elephant from the front. But at the same time elephants are normally gentle animals; legend has it that an elephant will never step on a child, no matter what (but you wouldnt want to be near a male elephant when he is in heat). Elephants are the largest living land mammals. In fact an elephant child (calf) weighs about 200 pounds (100 kg) at birth. It is a fascinating animal, right from its humongous mass, to its unbelievable strength, and from its ivory tusks & huge ears to its tiny tail, but perhaps the most fascinating part is its trunk. The anatomy of a trunk An elephants trunk is composed of a very long nose with and an upper lip. It has no bones but has around six major muscle groups, with 40,000 muscles, subdivided into more than 100,000 muscle units. The trunk weighs around 300 pounds (150 kg), is about 2 metres long and has
by Mya Kagan (whyzz writer) >> more about the author Elephants are pretty trunky animals! An elephants trunk is like its nose and its upper lip all in one. For this reason, an elephants trunk is able to do lots of helpful and important things, including smell, touch, and pick things up! One of the most amazing things about an elephants trunk is that it can pick up things that are really heavy and need a lot of strength (for example, a tree) or things that are really small and might otherwise slip away easily (for example, a pencil). Elephants also use their trunks for sucking up water and then squirting it into their mouths for drinking, or over their heads for cooling down and bathing! Aside from being like an elephants upper lip and nose, the trunk is also used kind of like how you might sometimes use your hand or arm — elephants greet each other using their trunks, and also use them to touch each other affectionately, kind of like giving a hug!
So, what are those long noses for? They want to suggest something in order to ashame human males? No, even if at this chapter, too, the elephants are champions. In fact, a trunk can sniff at a long distance from the owner’s face, grab things, or march across a pool underwater, using it as a snorkel. Because the trunk does not have bones, it’s extremely mobile. In fact, nose bones are greatly reduced, and not only in elephants, but also in other mammals that developed rudimentary trunks (like tapirs). A trunk contains more than 40,000 muscles and tendons, and its tip is very sensitive, making it very precise (elephants can pick up from the floor objects by the size of a coin). In addition, there is one (in African elephant) or two (in Asian elephant) “fingers” on the tip to grasp small objects. This prehensile “hand” can weigh 400 lb.
