Elephants may use trunks like 'leaf blowers' to obtain inaccessible food
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 04:25
in Biology & Nature
Two captive elephants blast air through their trunks to grasp hard-to-reach food, suggests an initial study published today in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. This behaviour, studied in a zoo population of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), is altered according to the distance to the food, which may indicate advanced mental ability and awareness of their physical environment.