Where do elephants get their wrinkles: scientists have discovered interesting facts

Thanks to a new study of wrinkles in elephant skin, scientists have discovered interesting facts. The origin of these giants' wrinkles shows how the trunk has become "the most incredible grasping organ on the planet."

According to scientists, the elephant's trunk is much more than just a nose. They use it to pick up food, splash water or sand on their backs, and trumpet to other elephants, Science writes.

Why the trunk is so functional

"This is the most incredible grasping organ on the planet. It's the wrinkles on the trunk that make it so versatile," said neuroscientist Michael Brecht of Humboldt University of Berlin.

When Andrew Schulz, a mechanical engineer and biophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, began studying elephant trunks, he assumed that their characteristic wrinkles had developed over time. But in the course of his research, he realized that even newborn elephants have wrinkled trunks.

The researchers say that the folds in the trunks of baby elephants are formed before birth. "The baby elephant even uses its trunk to suckle milk from its mother elephant and then splashes it into its mouth," Michael Brecht added.

Different species – different properties

To find out even more interesting facts, Andrew Schulz, Michael Brecht, and their colleagues set out to study two species – Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and African elephants (Loxodonta africana) – that use their trunks differently.

According to scientists, African elephants have two strong cartilaginous "fingers" at the ends of their trunks that allow them to pick up objects. Asian elephants have one "finger" and one bulb, which they use to pinch large objects, such as melons or other food, between their trunk and lower lip.

The researchers also found that Asian elephants' trunks contain more wrinkles: an average of 126, compared to 83 wrinkles in African elephants. The extra wrinkles may give Asian species more flexibility to compensate for the lack of an extra "toe," Schulz says.

Experts have found that wrinkles begin to appear as soon as the trunk emerges – about 20 days after an elephant's 22-month pregnancy. Over the next 150 days, this number of wrinkles increases in both species, doubling every 3 weeks, and concentrates around the fulcrum. However, Asian elephants acquire even more wrinkles later on.

Next, the scientists investigated whether using the trunk contributes to the formation of additional wrinkles, as they had initially suspected. Elephants have either a left or right trunk, meaning they constantly bend the process to one side to put food in that side of their mouth. The researchers found that over time, this bending creates more wrinkles on one side than the other.

According to scientists, elephants are an interesting model for studying soft joints. After all, other animals do not have such nimble joints as the elephant trunk.

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