Can Elephants Swim?
Elephants are excellent swimmers like all other mammals. The only mammals that have to learn to swim are humans and the primates. The pachyderm’s massive body, very surprisingly, gives them enough buoyancy to float easily. They swim completely submerged, with their head above the water and their mouths below, and use all four legs to paddle. The biggest advantage that elephants have above all other mammals is their trunk. A very versatile proboscis, they use their trunk like a snorkel. This enables them to breathe normally when swimming and allows them to swim long distances.
New research suggests that elephants are great at swimming because they could have evolved from mammals like the sea cow. And the reason they have trunks is becaus… Continue Reading (3 minute read)
They just don’t seem buoyant to me. I always think of them as big muscular giants. With big bones.
Of course they are such good swimmers….it’s because they already have their trunks on
I wonder if there are any documented cases of them being attacked by orcas or sharks.
So you’re saying I should shoot for the Olympics.
Imagine a species of aquatic elephants
At first I thought the thumbnail was elephant anus
Elephants, deer, and hippos are commonly colonizers of coastal islands, which is why there exist pygmy versions of all of the above. Some biogeographers think one of the reasons that the Komodo dragon, which evolved from a relative of the monitor lizard to develop gigantism, did so because their prey was a subspecies of pygmy elephants.
[Ricky Gervais has an amazing bit on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sivmld0X8eE)