How many muscles are in an elephant's trunk?

An elephant's trunk is the most conspicuous part of its body, but gaze upon an elephant skeleton and you'd never realize that such an appendage existed, as there are no bones to mark its presence.

The elephant's trunk contains over 40,000 muscles, divided into as many as 150,000 individual units! Compare that to the human body, which contains a paltry 639 muscles, and you start to get an idea how intricate the appendage is.

More Info: www.realclearscience.com

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78 Comments

Nina Kamwene

I missed it, thanks for the info. Kenya has female elephants who have tusks just like the males. An elephant is very smart and matriachy. These majestic animals are being poached to extinction because of China's love of ivory. Please help keep them on the planet.

Rosemary Grove

Admirable creatures, but man still thinks he is entitled to drive them to extinction? We shall see.

Rich Davis

Of course the end users are to blame. If there’s no market, there’s no reason to kill them. Give them a market and humans will destroy anything on this planet for a buck.

nmcgirt

Got this question wrong ! Anyway, It's true that an elephant never forgets , elephants will return to a particular place where a loved one has died, they are one of the most intelligent creatures in the world.

Kristi Stevens

That's insane!!!! Wow!!!! Who would have thought?!!! Animals are AMAZING!!!♡

Ken Turnbull

Elephants are nice people

These animal has very intaligent or powerfull

Player

The nose knows so much when you are an elephant.

sumit gawade

Very gentle and affable animals...

Hope

W🐘w

Sybilla

Such an interesting question with a very good picture. I had to think hard of all the movements an elephant's trunk is capable of and that decided me to guess 40.000.