The Wildest Things You Never Knew About Elephants

This comes in handy when an elephant herd is faced with an outside threat. Instead of abandoning each other, they stand together. The stronger elephants will form a protective circle around the elderly, sick and young as they prepare to defend themselves.

That’s due to extremely sensitive nerve endings in the elephants’ feet that can pick up these "underground" messages. The ability to pick up on these vibrations can protect the herd from storms, poachers and other threats.

For example, two elephants named Jenny and Shirley were reunited in an elephant sanctuary after 23 years apart. Though they only spent time at a sanctuary for a few months, the two old friends became excited and started bellowing as they recognized each other.

Because of their huge bodies, elephants have enough buoyancy to float on the surface and are able to use their strong legs to paddle forward. They also use their trunks as snorkels so they can breathe even while underwater as they cross the depths.

Researchers have discovered symptoms of PTSD in elephants that have witnessed a family member being killed by poachers or have gone through some type of abuse or isolation. This high level of trauma can cause aggression, fear and lack of socialization in elephants. These symptoms can impede the elephants’ ability to reproduce and integrate into a herd, particularly when it comes to orphaned elephants.

A famous example is Raju, an elephant from India that cried after he was rescued from a life of torture in 2014. The poor animal had been forced to live in painful, spiked chains and only ate scraps from tourists that passed by. When freed, the animal was seen shedding actual tears, which were likely tears of joy.

Elephants don't have the greatest vision, so they can become startled if something runs by them unexpectedly, especially a little mouse. So it appears that pachyderms are more afraid of a mouse's sudden movement than the actual mouse itself.

Contrary to popular belief (and cartoons), elephants are not too fond of eating peanuts either — at least, wild elephants aren’t. Wild elephants are found in Africa and Asia, and peanuts don't grow in the wild in those habitats.

Elephants in some parts of Indonesia are actually trained to help fight fires. In 2015, East Sumatra was hit with multiple fires over several months. Twenty-three trained elephants from a conservation center carried water pumps and hoses to help fight the fires.

According to Frank Pope, CEO of the conservation and research group Save the Elephants, these animals are extremely empathetic. "They have deep relationships with their family members, they celebrate the birth of babies, take care of their young like we do, and nurture and reassure them into their teens," he shared with Reader's Digest.

Elephant skin is also wrinkled in appearance. These wrinkles, interestingly enough, act as a cooling mechanism by increasing the skin's surface area. They help to trap moisture, which then takes longer to evaporate. That helps elephants stay cooler for a longer period than they would if they had smooth skin.

However, elephants do have a way to combat the sun. They simply play in the dirt. Yes, to protect their skin from the sun and insects, elephants cover themselves with dust, dirt or mud as a layer of protection. It's their own self-made sunscreen! Adults also stand over calves to cast shade and protect them from the sun as they’re sleeping.

Elephants can flap their ears, using them as big fans to radiate excess heat away from their bodies. The skin in an elephant's ear is also very thin but full of tiny blood vessels that release heat as the creature’s body temperature rises. Elephants also spray their ears with water, which helps cool them down even more when they flap.

African elephants in particular listen to the advice of the matriarch of the family. In fact, they stay in a herd for life, or at least for over a decade if they need to leave — just to learn enough information to survive in the wild.

Elephants trample forests and dense grasslands, making room for smaller species to coexist and to create the opportunity for tree regeneration. When it comes to planted species, many plants are dependent on passing through an elephant’s digestive tract before they can germinate. About a third of tree species in central African forests rely on elephants for the distribution of seeds.

While in musth (pronounced "must"), male elephants experience increases in testosterone levels. This prepares them to compete for the attention of females but increases aggressive behaviors. They will fight other males to show dominance and are a threat to anything that gets in their way during that time.

With 40,000 different muscles, an elephant's trunk is strong enough to grab huge things like branches off a tree but also agile enough to grab delicate things like blades of grass. The trunk is also used to show signs of affection towards other elephants.

Though pachyderms and hyraxes may be completely different in size, they still share a few common physical traits. They both have tusks that grow from their incisor teeth, flattened nails and several similarities in their reproductive organs.

Elephants have been seen vocalizing for another dead elephant and trying to hug the dead animal with their trunks. Some elephants try to bury the dead body by covering it in leaves and soil.

Authai was shown side-by-side images of different fruits that had different quantities from zero to 10 and was trained to pick the image that had more fruit. Authai had a success rate of 66.8%, showing that Asian elephants are able to process numbers.

In addition to their sharp memory and empathy, elephants can pick up on using different tools and mimic human voices. Elephants are also some of the only mammals that can recognize their own reflections in a mirror or water (dolphins, apes and humans are the others).

In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers played back the voices of two different ethnic groups in Africa. One was the Maasai tribe, which has been known to kill elephants. The other was the Kamba, a group that does not. After the chosen elephants heard the Maasai voices, they began to act defensively and became agitated. The study showed that elephants can recognize different languages.

A pregnant elephant carries its baby for almost 22 months! With that extra time to develop, it's no wonder that a newborn elephant can weigh up to 260 pounds and stand about 3 feet tall. The long gestation period is also thought to increase a newborn's ability to survive on its own.

Though that may seem like a pretty healthy diet that would keep them lean, these creatures spend most of their days eating — 12 to 18 hours a day to be exact. In that amount of time, elephants can consume over 300 pounds of food. That's over 50 tons per year.

Jawed, one of YouTube's founders, posted an 18-second scene of himself standing in front of elephants at a zoo. In the video, he speaks about how cool the elephants' long trunks were. It was a short but important clip, and, as of December 2019, the video has more than 80 million views.

These makeshift watering holes then become sources of water not only for an elephant herd but also for other animals living nearby. Elephants are also known to create footpaths, which can be indicators of their activity to researchers, zoologists and wildlife park managers.

Tusks are more than just fancy teeth for elephants. The pachyderms use them to scrape bark from trees to eat or tear down branches for tasty leaves for dinner. Elephants can also use the tusks to defend themselves when necessary.

Using low-frequency vocalizations called "rumbles," which are inaudible to humans, these creatures can warn each other from far away if there is danger ahead. They can also give each other a heads-up if there’s water or food nearby. As previously discussed, elephants can also hear footsteps and these vocalizations through their feet.

Elephants move away from areas known for poaching, especially if they’ve suffered the loss of a matriarch at the hands of poachers. They also move more at night or spend less time foraging for food in the daytime in at-risk areas to try to steer clear of the dangerous hunters.

These intelligent animals communicate with each other a lot through rumbles. They also communicate to potential mates or herds through touch and visual signals, which may be harder for humans to pick up on.