Why Do Elephants Have Big Ears

Huge ears, like Dumbo (an elephant from the famous Disney cartoon), has only one species of elephants – African elephants. There are also Indian (Asian) elephants, but their ears are not so big. Among the elephants, except the size of the ears, there are other differences.

The skin of the African elephant is crumpled and wrinkled, while the Indian elephant skin is smoother. African elephant at the end of trunk has two “fingers” like thumb and forefinger in humans, and can with them to pick up various items. Indian elephants have only one “finger” and therefore have skillfully to bend the trunk to something raise.

Ears of african elephant are huge and have a form very similar to the African continent. Ears can be up to 2.1 m, and one ear can weigh up to 50 kg. Ears of Indian elephants are smaller, but still leave a strong impression. Although they have very large ears, elephants do not have a particularly good hearing. For what then serve and big ears? It turns out that they are the elephant version of the cooling system. The elephants do not have sweat glands and so can not cool down through sweating when the days are hot. Instead, they’re waving the ears.

Types of Elephants

However, the ears have not a role variety. In the ears of an elephant is a network of large blood vessels, which are spread when hot and shrink when it gets cold. When is very hot, elephants gently waving ears to air flowed through their veins, increased ear and cold blood that flows through them. Since one ear may have a length of up to 2.1 m, when going through the network of blood vessels on the surface can be cooled down a lot of blood. This chilled blood then returns to the body of an elephant and help him to get refreshed.

Regardless of the size of the ears, elephants are the largest mammals that live outside the ocean. If there is no some species of whales, elephants would be the largest animals on the planet. The elephants prefer to live in groups of 25 or more individuals. They are nomads in search of food (grass, leaves, fruits and nuts) exceed hundreds of kilometers. Every 18 hours elephant eats about 300 kg of food, leaf by leaf, nut after nut. All that coarse food elephant flooded with 75 to 150 liters of water a day.