The trunk of elephants is a formidable tool.
This one-of-a-kind organ has many uses, but pachyderms don't use it as a drinking straw.
If they did that, they would choke!
Their trunk is indeed nothing more than their nasal organ.
Elephants being mammals like us, they are not able to flood their lungs.
On the other hand, their trunk is good for them to drink, but in a completely different way.
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A real Swiss army knife!
With between 100,000 and 150,000 muscles, this appendage is flexible, prehensile and very powerful.
He can indeed lift 3% of the animal's weight.
The pachyderms use it as a sort of hand with astonishing precision.
To drink, the trunk is very practical because it avoids the animals having to bend down to access the water when it is at ground level.
If it is even lower, as is often the case in times of drought, the elephants simply cannot access it without their trunks.
This strange nose whose length can exceed 2 m is not a straw but rather a pump.
Its two oversized nostrils narrow at each end;
the elephant can suck up to 10 liters of water from it without it passing through the nasal cavities and thus fill it like a reservoir.
It then brings this appendage to its mouth and releases the water into it to drink.
It also proceeds in this way to take “showers”: it pumps enough water to spray itself or its fellow creatures in order to cool off.
Drink and eat !
In addition to breathing, smelling, drinking and showering, the elephant uses its trunk to eat – it uses it to bring food to its mouth –, to communicate, to fight, to caress its loved ones, or even to uproot trees in order to clear a path in the equatorial jungles… It is also through it that he utters his famous cry, the trumpeting;
it can even be used as a snorkel to cross waterways without drowning!
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