How efficient is an elephant s trunk at holding water

A.� Very: It can hold up to 15 litres of water, which it can either drink or use to wash itself and keep cool.

�

Q.� How does it manage to hold so much water

A.� An elephant's trunk is very muscely; it has 55,000 of them, making it a very sensitive, dextrous and versatile tool that it uses for drinking, eating and breathing.

�

Q.� Can it do anything else with its trunk

A.� It uses its trunk to locate food by touch and smell, as an elephant cannot see down its trunk. In fact it's so important that if an elephant loses the use of its trunk it will die. Elephants are one of the few non-human animals known to use tools. It often waves a branch around to keep flies at bay with its trunk.

�

Q.� Does it need 15 litres of water a day

A.� It actually needs 10 times that amount to survive, along with 300 kilograms of food.

�

Although elephants are obviously big animals that need to eat a lot, their huge appetite and thirst is also influenced by the inefficiency of their digestive systems that excrete many nutrients back out of their bodies. Although this may sound rather inefficient, baby elephants, calves, eat their mother's dung, as do many herbivores. It is thought that this practise helps build up bacteria in the stomach necessary for breaking down tough plant foodstuffs.

�

Q.� How big

A.� The African elephant is the world's biggest land mammal and can weigh in at 7000kg and grow up to 340cm tall.

�

Q.� How long do they live for

A.� An elephant's longevity, of around 60 years, appears to be determined by its teeth. It has 6 sets of teeth that are used up consecutively, one set for around every 10 years. Once the last set has fallen out and there isn't another set to replace it the elephant, no longer able to feed, dies.

�

Q.� While its teeth hold out, what does it eat

A.� They're not picky and will eat just about any plant that grows in their natural habitat.

�

Q.� What about elephants, does anything eat them

A.� They're too big to have natural predators, but humans pose a big threat, mainly through destruction of their habitat as well as the long-term problem of poaching for ivory. However big cats have been known to take elephant calves.

�

Another significant threat is from each other. During the mating season male, or bull elephants, fight for fertile females and the results are often fatal.

�

Interested in the efficiency of an animals body part Ask The AnswerBank here.

�

by Lisa Cardy