Elephants are sometimes called pachyderms, thick-skinned. An elephantís skin is somewhere between two and four centimetres thick, which is not really that thick when compared to skin of the enormous blue whale. (How thick is the whaleís skin? Is it the blue whale the below is referring to in the orginal version?)

Some Asiatic elephants have light coloured areas on their skin, especially on the trunk and the ears. This gets progressively worse as they grow older, but the elephant is not bothered by it.

Some Asiatic elephants are rather pale from birth, the so-called white elephants even though they are not really white (they are not albinos, like the white rabbits you can often see.) In Thailand people think they are very special and worship them. When they are captured, they have to stay in special stables in the royal palace, where they lead an extremely boring life.

An elephant has no perspiratory or sebaceous glands which is it has to bathe frequently. If humans, and certain other animals as well, get too hot they sweat to cool off, whereas an elephant uses its ears to cool itself down. An elephantís ears contain very many blood vessels, and if the elephant flaps its ears the blood in the ears cools down. The African elephant usually lives in a warmer climate than the Asiatic: that is why it has bigger ears. And it is thus self-evident why the mammothís ears were so small! It goes without saying that elephants need a very strong bone structure to support their enormous bodies. An elephantís skull is very big, but if these bones were just as heavy as the others, the elephants would barely be able to lift their heads. That is why there are cavities in the skull which are filled with air, making the head less heavy.

The elephantís legs are designed to carry its enormous weight, not to flee from a predator since the elephant has no natural enemies, except man.

It was always said that elephants could not run, because they never moved in such a way that all limbs left the ground during part of their gait. That would be too much for their bodies. Researchers discovered that the elephants’ top speed is about 25 km/h, while they always have three feet on the ground. Because of the fact that their centre of gravity does move up and down, this movement can be called running. This means that their running is unique: their hind legs make a typical running movement, their front legs do not.

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