An elephant's trunk has many uses: eating, blowing, playing, "kissing", you name it.
Now there's another skill we can add to this list.
Two elephants have been observed blowing air through their trunks in order to manipulate and then eat food that was out of reach, as you can see in the video below.
Though it was previously hinted that they were
able to do so, this is the first time the behaviour has been
definitively observed and published in a scientific journal.This suggests that she was aware of the physical consequence of blowing on the far side The Asian elephants, living in captivity at Kamine Zoo in Japan, used different techniques depending on where the food was and how difficult it was to reach. For instance, the further away it was, the longer they blew.
"The use of breath for driving food is probably unique to elephants, due to their dexterous trunks," says lead author Kaori Mizuno of the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University, Japan.
The study shows for the first time that elephants can manipulate how long they blow for and the speed they do so. The team outline their findings in the journal Animal Cognition.
One of the elephants, Mineko, held the tip of her trunk over one side of the food and would blow until it was in reach. "This suggests that she was aware of the physical consequence of blowing on the far side, knowing that it was an efficient way to drive the food towards her," Mizuno said.
