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elephant are make love for their impressive ears , tusks and shorts . For instance , they chill down by pumping hot blood through their large ear , which they then flap to dissipate the heat . As for their trunks , Asian elephants have one " finger " at the closing of their automobile trunk , while African elephants have two " fingers , " which they can pinch together to grab modest items , like fruit .
Ross MacPhee , the curator emeritus of American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ) in New York City , has spent his life studying these majestic pachyderms and megafauna like them . With the Nov. 13 hatchway of " The mystical Lives of Elephants " showing at the AMNH , Live Science sat down with MacPhee to get word why the mammals ' tusk are such a treasure trove of information , how their trunks are like noses and hands in one , and how male teenage elephant are a lot like human single .
Exhibit curator Ross MacPhee looks at a full-scale model of a molting woolly mammoth for “The Secret World of Elephants” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.
Laura Geggel : I thought we would do a lightning rhythm of coolheaded fact about their auricle , tusks and trunks . So let ’s start with ears . What are some facts about elephant ears ?
Ross MacPhee : That those ears , especially in savannaelephants , are move about 20 % of the elephant ’s entire stemma supply at any one time . And that ’s because they ’re radiators — they ’re heat radiator for the elephant . Elephants live in very hot conditions like Botswana or Namibia . Just because of their body mass [ they ] have the job of needing to get free of spare high temperature . That ’s what the ears do .
So whereas the skin of the elephant is the better part of three - quarter of an column inch or more over most of the organic structure , on the ears they ’re down to millimeters [ thick ] . And they have very large veins passing through them . And this is why they hold back their ears out , why they flap them and that kind of thing . It all makes sense . It ’s a fanning kind of deal . In that way , they can substantially reduce their eubstance temperature .
Related : Which animal has the largest ears ?
LG : Next , let ’s do tusk .
RM : [ scientist measure the levels of isotope , or unlike version , of elements in elephant tusk , ] and because the tusks mature throughout the life of an animal , you could go practically week by week through whatever proportion of the animal ’s life is represented in its ivory at end . And by sampling , you could define to some extent what kind of plants they were focusing on … you could specify when in the fount of a female the female was pregnant because there ’s atomic number 20 carbonate deposited in that part of the ivory .
Another factoid , for the males , you may in some display case determine when they became sexually mature and were at that gunpoint repel out by the matriarch , because like human teenagers [ the vernal males ] do n’t know how to take care of themselves very well . So they have nutritional deficiencies for a while until they get with it and envision out where to go , where to wipe out , what to wipe out . you could detect that [ through structural change , not isotopes ] .
And then at long last , and this is in its [ own ] agency interesting and lamentable , if aliment does have declines , then the proportion of the isotope that you ’re looking at are become to switch as well , as the animal goes into starvation mood .
LG : Veering off track , so in ecumenical the male live with the ruck or be with their mom until they strive adolescence . And then they go off on their own , and they only come back to Ilex paraguariensis ? Do they just survive by themselves their whole lives ?
RM : It varies in population , it vary among the species . In the usual case for savanna elephants , males do go by themselves and hail back when they ’re in musth [ a rise in generative internal secretion ] and ready to mate , that part is correct . But what you find … is that in Asian elephant there is recent evidence there ’s a kind of knight bachelor grouping , think of all - virile grouping . It ’s not known if that ’s implicit in in their behavior or because of problems with humans . mean that they are persecuted in one way or the other and they make these groups just to be with other elephants — because they ca n’t be with the female in the herd , correct ?
How long these bands last , whether there ’s anything or function to them , is not really well see — it ’s a recently studied phenomenon . What you may say is it depart . What you could say , in oecumenical , is that the males tend to be solitary .
LG : lease ’s do coolheaded facts about the trunk .
RM : The matter that multitude know about the torso is that elephants apply the trunks so as to drink with . But in many other regard , this is an organ that is not unlike your hand . think of that in addition to being able to pick up very small objects , like individual leaves or cooky for menagerie brute , they can also expend the proboscis to convey with other elephants .
The elephant , if they know one another , have this kind of musical arrangement where they climb the short pants together on meeting . It ’s sort of like a handshake , there ’s no other means of describing it . It ’s " I agnize you , you recognize me . Hi , how are you ? " That kind of spate . It ’s a societal organ as well as a operational organ for drinking , for grabbing your intellectual nourishment , that sort of affair .
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And , of course , it is also the way of life that elephants sample smells in their surroundings . Here ’s a nice fact for you . Of all animals that have been tested genetically , as well as other way , elephant have the most functional genes get in touch with olfaction — there ’s yard of genes . It ’s awful . Obviously canids and felids are up there , as well . The guy with the biggest nozzle also has the near signified of odour : it ’s remarkable . Because they have so many receptors , that means they ’re able to very finely discriminate in their environs about affair to feed and also to feel what ’s break on .
It ’s really quite noteworthy how functionally important the nozzle is . It ’s grueling for a human to understand because our force are so negligible in that gaze .
This interview has been lightly edit for clarity .
