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1. There are over
40,000 muscles in an elephant’s trunk housing over 150,000 separate muscle
fascicles (fibres that allow the muscle to move in various directions). Humans have only 639 muscles in their entire
body!
2. The trunk alone
can lift close to 400kgs, yet is delicate enough to pick up a single piece of
straw.
3. The trunk can
hold over 20 litres of water which is why, despite their enormous water
requirements (approx. 120 litres per day), elephants generally do not linger
whilst drinking.
4. Elephants are
able to use their trunk like a snorkel, easily crossing deep water totally
submerged except for their trunk breaking the surface.
5. The trunk
contains 5 times more smell receptors than humans, and twice as many as a
bloodhound. This enables them to smell
water from miles away.
6. Such is their
olfactory power that projects are training elephants to aid in clearing
minefields in areas of Mozambique.
7. When faced with
a particularly interesting smell (such a cow’s urine) an elephant will touch
its trunk to the source of the odour and physically place it in the organ of
Jacobson in its mouth for further analysis.
8. Elephants show a
preference to one side of the trunk than the other, thus seeming right or
left-handed. This is most obvious during
the wet summer months when one side of the trunk becomes stained green from
repeatedly plucking grasses.
9. The tip of the
trunk contains a layer of cells known as ‘Pacinian Corpuscles’ that are
specialised in sensing vibrations. This
may be one of the mechanisms enabling elephants to communicate over such long
distances using low frequency rumbles.
10. These low sounds
are made possible as the trunk acts like a 2m long resonating chamber!
Blog and photos by Ben Coley
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