Sci-Five | The Hindu Science Quiz: On Elephants

To counteract the damaging rays of the sun, elephants throw sand on themselves. When coming out of a bath in a river, elephants will often throw mud or clay on themselves as a layer of protection.

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Filled with over 40,000 muscles, an elephant’s trunk is powerful and extremely sensitive. Elephants use their prehensile trunks to smell, eat, breathe underwater, make sounds, clean themselves, and defend themselves.

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New research has shown some of the elephants at Gorongosa National Park were naturally tuskless from 1977 to 1992. Researchers found that elephants who survived ivory poaching and civil war in Mozambique were descendants of elephants who did not have tusks.

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Elephants are the national animal of Thailand.

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​The elephant’s closest living relative is the Rock Hyrax, also called a rock rabbit or a dassie. Like elephants, hyraxes also have tusks growing from their incisor teeth. Hyraxes also have flattened hoof-like nails like elephants do on the tips of their toes rather than the curved claws seen on other mammals.

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