36 Newborn elephants are susceptible to pneumonia and must be kept warm and dry at all times. 37 Hannibal, who crossed the Alps with 37 elephants, lost all but one due to cold weather. During the ice age, it was colder. The long, slender trunk of the mammoth was particularly vulnerable to cold weather. For the more slender trunk of a young mammoth, the heat loss would be even more harmful.
Elephants usually die if their trunk is seriously injured.
If the mammoth lived in an Arctic climate, its drinking water in the winter must have come from eating snow or ice. A wild elephant requires 30-60 gallons of water each day. The heat needed to melt snow or ice and warm it to body temperature would consume about half a typical elephant's calories. Unlike other Arctic animals, the trunk would bear much of this thermal stress. Elephants dig for salt using their sharp tusks.