An elephant trunk is a long nose that is also its upper lip. It has no bones in it. The trunk is strong enough to lift a large tree trunk. It is also gentle enough to pick up a single piece of straw. Besides grabbing and drinking, an elephant uses its trunk to smell, snorkel, spray dust, touch, sort things and make sounds.

Many people think an elephant drinks through its trunk like a straw. It does not. An elephant sucks water part of the way up, curls the trunk toward its mouth and pours the water in. An elephant can drink up to 50 gallons of water in a day. That is about 190 liters.

Elephants flap their big ears to cool off on hot days. Blood flows through the many vessels in the ears. When an elephant flaps its ears, that blood cools down. That helps cool the whole body. Elephants also cover themselves with mud, dust or water. This protects their skin from the sun and from biting insects.

African elephants are the largest animals that live on land. Adults weigh from about 2 to 7 tons, or 2,000 to 6,100 kilograms. They stand up to about 13 feet (4 meters) tall at the shoulder. Elephants eat plants such as grass, fruit, leaves, roots and bark. An adult elephant can eat up to 300 pounds of food in one day. That is up to 136 kilograms.

A tusk is a long front tooth that keeps growing. Elephants use their tusks to dig for water and food. In the dry season, they dig up dry riverbeds and make watering holes. Many other animals can drink from these holes. Elephant dung is full of seeds, which helps plants spread across the land.

Elephants live in family groups called herds. An African elephant herd is led by an older female called the matriarch. An elephant mother carries her calf for about 22 months before it is born. A newborn elephant, called a calf, stands about 3 feet (1 meter) tall. Other members of the herd help look after calves.

Woolly mammoths were extinct relatives of today's elephants. They lived in the Ice Age. A woolly mammoth was covered in long, shaggy hair that kept it warm. Mammoths lived on cold, treeless tundra, not on glaciers. They used their long, curved tusks to dig under the snow for food.

Words to know

• trunk: long nose
• tusk: long front tooth
• matriarch: lead female
• tundra: cold treeless land
• extinct: gone forever

The short version

African elephants are the largest animals that live on land. An elephant trunk is a long nose that is also its upper lip, and it has no bones in it. Elephants flap their big ears to cool off on hot days, and they use their tusks to dig for water and food.

Quick facts

• African elephants are the largest animals that live on land.
• An elephant trunk has no bones in it.
• Elephants flap their big ears to cool off on hot days.
• A newborn elephant, called a calf, stands about 3 feet (1 meter) tall.
• In the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig up dry riverbeds and make watering holes that many other animals can drink from.