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.
In the rock-hard permafrost this would be almost impossible, summer or winter, especially with the curved tusks of the mammoth. Nearby Plants and Animals. The easiest and most accurate way to determine an extinct animal or plant's environment is to identify familiar animals and plants buried nearby. All live in warm climates. Some frozen remains are of burrowing animals, such as voles, who would not burrow in rock-hard permafrost.