An elephant's well-packed trunk

By Christian Science Monitor

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It has been called the Swiss Army knife of the animal world: An elephant's trunk is a hand, hoist, hose, vacuum, trumpet, snorkel and shovel.

The trunk is actually the elephant's nose and upper lip. It has no bones but more muscles and tendons (some 100,000) than we have in our entire bodies.

An elephant can lift several hundred pounds with its prehensile trunk, yet its tip is as sensitive as a human finger. It can pluck a single blade of grass.

An elephant's trunk also provides clues to its ancestry. The fact that elephants breathe through their trunks while underwater led naturalists to believe that pachyderms are related to water-dwelling manatees.

Early land-dwelling elephants would have had a built-in advantage — long trunks to gather leaves and other food that was out of reach for other animals.

While an elephant can't drink through its nose, its trunk can hold and deliver two to three gallons of water to the elephant's mouth. Sometimes, instead of drinking the water, an elephant sprays it over its back for a cooling bath. They also use their trunks to collect and spray dust over their backs.

Trunks are trumpets, too, warning of danger or calling out greetings. Elephants entwine trunks and sometimes put them in each other's mouths in greeting.

Trunks communicate silently as well. Kandula's mother, Shanthi, caresses him with her trunk to show her affection.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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