Why do some elephants have very large ears?
by 
Halskiisaklink
ANSWERS: 7
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The enormous ears of elephants act as cooling devices. The gigantic earflaps (which can measure up to 2 square metres (21.5 square feet) are equipped with an intricate web of blood vessels. When the animal flaps its ears, the blood temperature lowers by as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/afesg/faq/elefaq.html#EarFunction
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That would be African elephants that have the larger ears. Asian Elephants have smaller ones. Think of those ears as one large heat sink.
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G'day Professor Sakhalinski, Thank you for your question. The elephant's ears help keep it cool. Elephant ears are made of a very thin layer of skin stretched over cartilage and a rich network of blood vessels. On hot days, elephants will flap their ears all the time creating a slight breeze. This breeze cools the surface blood vessels, and then the cooler blood gets circulated to the rest of the animal's body. The hot blood entering the ears can be cooled as much as ten degrees Fahrenheit before returning to the body. In particular, African elephants have large ears because they live close to the equator where it is hot for much of the year. I have attached sources for your reference. Regards Wikipedia Elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Ears San Diego Zoohttp://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-elephant.html
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Did you never see Dumbo? Elephants can fly. Especially pink ones... Why do you think they have such large ears? Because they don't have wings.
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The elephants ears act as a cooling system in the same way as a dogs tongue they sweat through the ears and are used to fan and the amount of blood that passes through the many vessals has a chance to cool down, the same way a dog pants ans sweats and cools
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All the better to hear you with, my dear. Or maybe to swat the flies out of their eyes....if they did it with their trunk you'd have a lot of black-eyed elephants roaming around!
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There are two kinds of elephants: Asian elephants, with ears that are rather small and African elephants, with ears that are enormous. They are closely related, but evolved differently. I think the difference is that the climate for Asian elephants includes a lot of shady jungle, and they don't need as much surface area for cooling as the African elephants do, who spend time in the jungle, but also in the sunny veldt and near-desert areas. (As everyone else has explained, the amount of surface area, along with flapping, means the elephants can expose their shallow blood vessels in their ears to the motion of the air, which cools the blood in the ears, and then brings down the whole body temperature when that blood returns to the animal's core.) Hope this helps!
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