That's right, an elephant can hoist Ulambayaryn Byambajav, a lb world champion sumo wrestler, like he was a bag of peanuts. Elephants are the only animals that can snorkel without aid. By holding the tips of their trunks above the water's surface, elephants can traverse rivers totally submerged.
They simply walk across the riverbed. Elephant Trunks actually have "fingers. That's why the former is able to grasp objects by pinching the opposing tips of the trunk while the latter must wrap its trunk round objects like a boa constrictor. The elephant's trunk contains over 40, muscles, divided into as many as , individual units!
Compare that to the human body, which contains a paltry muscles, and you start to get an idea how intricate the appendage is. Thanks to its trunk, an elephant sports a sense of smell up to four times as sensitive as a bloodhound's. Cosmos is published by The Royal Institution of Australia, a charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science. Financial contributions, however big or small, help us provide access to trusted science information at a time when the world needs it most.
Please support us by making a donation or purchasing a subscription today. Elephant trunks can behave very much like boned joints when necessary. Samantha Page Samantha Page is a science journalist based in Spain.
More from:. Samantha Page. An animal's sense of smell is linked to the number of olfactory receptor genes it has. And elephants, well, they have a lot of them, nearly 2, — more than any other animal we know of.
Bloodhounds, for example, only have about while humans have even fewer. In fact, an elephant's nose is so good it can actually sniff out bombs. People have reported that African elephants avoid land mines in Angola and in , researchers put it to the test. Elephants were presented with a lineup of buckets filled with different smells, including TNT, the main ingredient in land mines.
Out of 97 TNT samples, elephants detected all but one. Of course, their trunks didn't evolve as bomb detectors. They use their nose like we use our eyes, to find food and water, to avoid predators, and to map out other elephants nearby. That's like walking into a family reunion with your eyes closed and knowing exactly where everyone is. But if you can believe it, there are even more tricks up their, trunks.
When elephants traverse deep rivers, for example, they curve their trunk into a snorkel, and when bathing, they can use it as a hose, or more like a fire hose. With one suck, a trunk can pull in as much as 10 liters of water.
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