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Elephants are the only animals with a real trunk and it really is a remarkable organ. The trunk contains tens of thousands of muscles which make it highly flexible and powerful. An elephant can use its trunk to pick up a tree-trunk, but can also pick up something as small as a coin with it.

But what actually is a trunk? It originally developed from the nose and the upper lip, and inside the trunk there are two tubes which correspond to the nostrils. The early proboscidiae probably already had tusks, which made it slightly more difficult to bite off food while foraging as the tusks hindered their movements; therefore a longer nose was very useful.

What does an elephant use its trunk for?
In the first place the trunk is a tool to lift both big and heavy or small objects. Elephants grab food with their trunks and then put it in their mouths which means that they do not have to bend down to eat. They also drink using their trunks: an elephant sucks water into its trunk (about a bucketfulís worth), then tilts its head back so that the water flows into its mouth. An elephant does not actually suck the water up directly - if you have ever had the misfortune to inhale water through your nose then you can will understand why not- but an elephant is able to suck in water through the trunk, while its mouth is open ! The tip of the trunk, on which the Asiatic has one finger-like structure and the African two, acts as the elephantís hand. The old Indian word for elephant, hastin, literally means the animal with the hand.

Secondly, an elephant uses the trunk to have a shower. The elephant regularly squirts its skin with water before proceeding to cover it with dust or sand. The trunk is a necessary tool in this process.

Thirdly, the trunk is used to touch others, be it roughly or gently. The elephant can slap something rather hard with it, but it can also caress. Mothers often use their trunks to keep young elephants away from things they should not touch. If elephants want to hug, they twist their trunks together or put the tips of their trunks in each otherís mouths.

Fourthly, the trunk is used to produce sounds. An elephant can make many sounds, most of which we cannot even hear, and of course uses its trunk for its well-known trumpeting.

As already mentioned, elephants are good swimmers and enjoy swimming, and use their trunks as snorkels. This seems to be a detail, but it is one of the things that make the elephant truly unique.

Finally, a trunk is also simply a nose. An elephantís sense of smell is highly developed. An elephant sometimes puts its trunk up in the air and turns it in various directions to detect scents. Depending on the wind, they can smell other elephants up to a distance of five kilometres away.

At first young elephants do not know how to use their trunks. The thing just dangles there. They use their mouths to suckle milk and when they eat other things they bite them off, just as other animals do. Sometimes they even accidentally step on it! Gradually they learn how to use it and discover quite how handy (literally) it is.

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