Elephants Elephants are the largest of all land mammals, growing to nearly 4m tall and often weighing over 7000kg. They have a remarkable trunk, like a very long nose, called a proboscis, and this is useful for all kinds of tasks. An elephant can use its trunk to grasp branches, leaves, fruit and shoots and put food in its mouth. It can also suck up water to squirt into its mouth to drink or over its body to keep cool. An elephant can even use its trunk as a snorkel when swimming across deep rivers.
Elephants also have huge ears which they stretch out to keep cool.
The ears provide a large surface for body heat to escape from. Unfortunately, elephants' great ivory tusks are so valuable that hunters have killed them in huge numbers. There are now less than half a million elephants altogether in Africa. A family of African elephants. African elephants are noticeably larger than Asian elephants and their ears and tusks are larger, too.