Fast Facts: Elephants – Part III

Carl Kerby

Welcome to Fast Facts with Reasons for Hope! I’m Carl Kerby and, today, we’re talking about the elephant trunk.

It’s much more than just a long nose. It’s also an arm, hand, voice, snorkel, and straw – to name a few.

Any way that you look at it, it’s an amazingly designed, 300 pounds of flesh, muscle, fat, nerves, blood, and connective tissue.

For it to work properly, lots of muscles are needed.  

First, there are four big, external muscles on the top, bottom, and two sides, running the entire length of the trunk. These control the up, down, and sideways movements.

The other muscles are the ones that are unbelievable. These are the internal muscles and they are found in a highly complex network known as fascicles.

There are almost 150,000 of these. They run the entire length of the trunk like spokes on a bicycle wheel and work with the external muscles which give the trunk its extraordinary abilities, and, I do mean extraordinary.  Did you know that the elephant trunk can…  Whoops! Time’s up so we’ll talk about that in the next Fast Facts with Reasons for Hope. Until then, stay bold!

Carl Kerby is the founder of Reasons for Hope and co-creator of the DeBunked apologetic video series. His radio feature, Fast Facts, is heard weekly on VCY America, Saturdays at 9:25 AM Central.

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