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An African Elephant

An African elephant's trunk is about seven feet long and is used for many purposes. It allows elephants to drink water by sucking it into the trunk and squirting it into their mouth. Elephants also use their trunk to spray water and dust over their body to stay cool, as snorkels when swimming, and to pick up food like leaves, grass, and berries. Their trunks are also used for social behaviors like greeting others by wrapping trunks together or helping calves. The long document provides details on the anatomy and uses of an elephant's trunk.

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Lidka Javorova
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30 views2 pages

An African Elephant

An African elephant's trunk is about seven feet long and is used for many purposes. It allows elephants to drink water by sucking it into the trunk and squirting it into their mouth. Elephants also use their trunk to spray water and dust over their body to stay cool, as snorkels when swimming, and to pick up food like leaves, grass, and berries. Their trunks are also used for social behaviors like greeting others by wrapping trunks together or helping calves. The long document provides details on the anatomy and uses of an elephant's trunk.

Uploaded by

Lidka Javorova
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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An african elephant

An adult African elephant's trunk is about seven feet (two meters) long! It's
actually an elongated nose and upper lip. Like most noses, trunks are for
smelling.
COMMON NAME:
African elephants
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Loxodonta
TYPE:
Mammals
DIET:
Herbivore
GROUP NAME:
Herd
AVERAGE LIFE SPAN IN THE WILD:
Up to 70 years
SIZE:
Height at the shoulder, 8.2 to 13 feet
WEIGHT:
2.5 to seven tons

When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much as 2 gallons (7.5 liters) of


water into its trunk at a time. Then it curls its trunk under, sticks the tip
of its trunk into its mouth, and blows. Out comes the water, right down
the elephant's throat.

Since African elephants live where the sun is usually blazing hot, they
use their trunks to help them keep cool. First they squirt a trunkful of
cool water over their bodies. Then they often follow that with a
sprinkling of dust to create a protective layer of dirt on their skin.
Elephants pick up and spray dust the same way they do water—with
their trunks.

Elephants also use their trunks as snorkels when they wade in deep
water. An elephant's trunk is controlled by many muscles. Two
fingerlike parts on the tip of the trunk allow the elephant to perform
delicate maneuvers such as picking a berry from the ground or plucking
a single leaf off a tree. Elephants can also use its trunk to grasp an
entire tree branch and pull it down to its mouth and to yank up clumps
of grasses and shove the greenery into their mouths.

When an elephant gets a whiff of something interesting, it sniffs the air


with its trunk raised up like a submarine periscope. If threatened, an
elephant will also use its trunk to make loud trumpeting noises as a
warning.

Elephants are social creatures. They sometimes hug by wrapping their


trunks together in displays of greeting and affection. Elephants also use
their trunks to help lift or nudge an elephant calf over an obstacle, to
rescue a fellow elephant stuck in mud, or to gently raise a newborn
elephant to its feet. And just as a human baby sucks its thumb, an
elephant calf often sucks its trunk for comfort. One elephant can eat
300 pounds (136 kilograms) of food in one day.

People hunt elephants mainly for their ivory tusks. Adult females and
young travel in herds, while adult males generally travel alone or in
groups of their own.

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