The Elephant’s Trunk call

Of all the animals that roam the planet, very few are as strong as the elephant; in fact it is said that even a lion would think twice before attacking an elephant from the front. But at the same time elephants are normally gentle animals; legend has it that an elephant will never step on a child, no matter what (but you wouldn’t want to be near a male elephant when he is in heat).

Elephants are the largest living land mammals. In fact an elephant child (calf) weighs about 200 pounds (100 kg) at birth. It is a fascinating animal, right from its humongous mass, to its unbelievable strength, and from its ivory tusks & huge ears to its tiny tail, but perhaps the most fascinating part is its trunk.

The anatomy of a trunk
An elephant’s trunk is composed of a very long nose with and an upper lip. It has no bones but has around six major muscle groups, with 40,000 muscles, subdivided into more than 100,000 muscle units. The trunk weighs around 300 pounds (150 kg), is about 2 metres long and has nerve endings at the tip. All of this makes the trunk incredibly strong & supple. Thus it is strong enough to lift a log about a foot thick & weighing close to 400 to 500 pounds (200 to 250 kg) and is flexible and accurate enough to pick up a coin off the floor.
The African elephant has two finger-like protrusions on the tip of its trunk, while the Asian (Indian) elephant has only one. [African elephants are also generally larger and have bigger ears than the Asian elephants]

Jack of all trades and master of all
So what all can an elephant do with its trunk or in other words, what functions does a trunk serve?
The trunk is the human combination of a hand and a nose. So it uses it for showering itself with dust for protection from biting flies as well as for drinking water and taking showers (a trunks can hold about 2 to 2.5 gallons of water), for picking food, breathing (although like humans, it can breathe through the mouth as well), sniffing the air for danger, showing affection to loved ones by touching & caressing, scratching parts of their body like the eyes & ears, playing friendly wrestling matches, lifting & throwing objects, and also while threatening an adversary (ironically, if an elephant charges with its trunk raised outwards, it is most probably a threatening gesture, but if it charges with its trunk down, it probably is not a good time to offer it a peanut. The probable reason for not using the trunk for fights could be that it is the most sensitive part of its body).
The trunk is also used for smelling an object; the elephant does so by touching the object with the tip of its trunk and then placing it inside its mouth, where an organ of smell called the Jacobson's organ, figures out the smell.
Elephants also use their trunks as snorkels when swimming under water, in fact some scientist suggest that the elephant has evolved from an aquatic creature that used a trunk like appendage as a snorkel. In fact elephants may even share common ancestors with sea cows. Evidence suggests that the elephants moved from sea to land about 30 million years ago. Obviously the trunk was not needed then for drinking water, but was used for foraging food off the seabed.

The ground beneath its feet
When an elephant is on an unsteady ground, it will move ahead only after ascertaining whether the ground is firm enough to walk on, it does so by beating the ground with its trunk to test its firmness. It will then carefully move forward, the front foot stepping into the cleared area, while the rear foot would move into the location cleared by the front foot.
Interestingly the elephant also uses its trunk to show anger or displeasure by violently beating the ground with it.

New born trunks
If you notice the trunk of a calf (baby elephant), it is relatively short. This is because the baby elephant is unaware of how to use it and a longer trunk would result in the calf stumbling over it or stepping on it, probably damaging it in the process. The trunk grows quickly thereafter. Calves have to be taught the usage of their trunk, as it is quite a complex tool. They do not use their trunks to suckle their mothers for milk; they do so directly with their mouths.