Welcome to Fast Facts with Reasons for Hope! I’m Carl Kerby and, today, we’re going to talk about the elephant’s extraordinary… ears!
The African elephant’s ears are three times larger than the Asian elephant’s ears, but, they’re both unbelievably designed and incredibly important.
Each elephant’s ears are unique and different to any other elephant’s ears and they can be used for identification, like fingerprints on a human.
They can also be used to tell someone to leave them alone.
Most importantly, though, they’re used as the elephant’s “air conditioner.”
That’s right! The elephant’s massive body generates serious heat. Africa also generates… serious heat.
Most mammals can “sweat” to lower their body temperatures, but not the elephant. Its ears regulate its body temperature.
Warm blood is pumped into the elephant’s ears, where the blood vessels are very close to the surface of the skin. The air cools down the blood and it is then pumped back into the body!
If the elephant flaps its ears, it can actually lower its blood temperature by ten degrees very quickly.
Unbelievably, the elephant can run all of the blood in its body through its ears in only twenty minutes.
There’s even more, but we’ll have to 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.
