What Can an Elephant Do With Its Trunk?

Step 1 of 5

There is no bone in it.

Your arm bends where bones meet. A trunk has no bones and no joints, so it can bend anywhere along its length — it is closer to your tongue than to your arm.

Because it has no joints, a trunk can wrap a whole log, coil into a spiral, or reach round a corner.

Step 2 of 5

It does not drink through it.

An elephant sucks water part way up the trunk, holds it there, then curls the tip into its mouth and blows it in. Drinking through a trunk would be like drinking through your nose.

Step 3 of 5

The tip is a hand.

At the end are one or two soft finger-like points. They are sensitive and precise enough to pick up a single blade of grass, while the muscle behind them can shove a tree over.

Step 4 of 5

The ears are for cooling, not just hearing.

African elephant ears are enormous sheets of skin threaded with blood vessels. Flapping them moves air over that blood and sends it back into the body cooler — a radiator you can hear from far off.

Step 5 of 5

They talk in sounds you cannot hear.

Much elephant conversation is far too low-pitched for human ears. Those deep rumbles travel for kilometres through air and ground, so herds keep in touch long after they are out of sight.