#ElephantTuesdays: ELEFACTS 🐘

This is the last entry of the Elephant Tuesdays blog, and as a kind of farewell, I would like to shortly name some interesting facts about elephants that you might not know. 

Did you know that…?

ELEPHANTS SHOW HANDEDNESS
Elephants are right-trunkers and left-trunkers; they show side preferences when moving their trunks and forefeet for feeding, uprooting and grabbing vegetation (Keerthipriya, P.; Tewari, Rachna; Vidya, T.N. C. Journal of Comparative Psychology, Vol 129(4), Nov 2015, 377-387) 

ELEPHANTS COULD BE TICKLISH

Scientists agree that joy is an emotion that most of the mammals experience. It has been agreed that rats engage in joyful plays like apes, and that they have evolved a gargalesis tickle response. I couldn´t find any scientific written evidence of elephants showing gargalesis, but there are tons of personal experiences among animal keepers and elephant experts that would support it 

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ELEPHANTS FIND WAYS TO REDUCE PHYSICAL PAIN

It´s been often witnessed that elephants suffering from physical pain caused by wounds resulting from chains, hooks, amputations, etc. press their forehead against a wall or bite their trunk to reduce pain. 

ELEPHANTS PRODUCE TEARS

In order to draw any scientific conclusion about something, science requires that we be able to measure it. We cannot measure emotions, so although it is a fact that elephants do produce tears, it is not scientifically certain that these tears are the result of an emotional response. 

ELEPHANTS USE THEIR TRUNK AS A SNORKEL
Elephants are known to be excellent swimmers and have been documented to spend hours in deep water swimming with just their trunks above the water line.

It is the only animal that can snorkel at depth. From a physiological point of view, this fact would be impossible, as the resulting pressure differences require special lung structures, and specifically, changes in the pleural membranes and pleural space. An autopsy conducted in 1681 on an elephant revealed that the elephant´s lungs are unusual; they have connective tissue in their pleural space, instead of liquid. As breathing while being underwater must generate enormous pressures to expand their lungs against the water pressure, they need a very strong and thick muscle around their lungs.

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ELEPHANTS TAKE SALIVA BATHS
At very high temperatures and with no near water available, elephants will often introduce their trunks inside their mouths to get saliva and spray it on their bodies to get refreshed.

ELEPHANTS ARE CHEMICALLY RELATED TO INSECTS

What does the largest terrestrial mammal have in common with a moth?

They are pheromone fellows; elephants share an attraction to (Z)-7-dodecenylacetate, a female urine pheromone that provokes a high frequency of chemosensory responses in males prior to and during mating, with 140 species of moth (Rasmussen et al., 1996). Such coincidences are a consequence of convergent evolution.

THANKS A MILLION FOR READING !!

original videos: 
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References;

National Geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1105_021106_elephantsnorkel.html

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI): 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11909991

Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants, Murray E., Fowler and Susan K. Mikota (2006)

Eleaid: http://www.eleaid.com/elephant-information/elephant-trunks/

Pheromones: Convergence and contrasts in insects and vertebrates,Tristram D. Wyatt (in Wyatt, TD (2003) Pheromones and Animal Behaviour: Communication by Smell and Taste. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

Von Elefanten und Menschen, Kurt, Fred (2014)