Why do elephants have such big ears? There’s not one answer.
It’s a classic Disney moment: Dumbo the elephant jumps from a burning building, spreads his enormous ears and flies away. Although elephants in real life can’t fly, they certainly have huge ears. The African elephant, for example, has the largest ears of any animal. Their ears can grow up to 6.6 feet long and 4.11 feet wide, making up 20% of their total body surface area. But why are elephant ears so big?
Of course, this has nothing to do with theft. Elephant ears play a vital role in how they cool themselves and communicate.
Why Staying Cool Is So Hard for Elephants
Elephants are the largest land animal in the world, weighing 12,000 pounds (more than an ambulance). While elephants’ size is often an advantage when it comes to fending off predators or reaching tall vegetation, it also makes it more difficult for them to stay cool. Their massive bodies produce a tonne from internal body heat, even when they are simply still.
What makes this problem even more serious is their habitat. Elephants generally live in warm climates where the risk of overheating is higher.
We humans cool ourselves by dispersing heat through long, narrow parts of the body, like our legs and arms. However, elephants, with their bulky bodies and thick legs, have relatively little skin surface area to release all the built-up heat.
Unlike humans, elephants don’t really sweat. They have a few sweat glands, mainly between their toes, which can release a small amount of moisture, but this only cools them slightly.. They also cannot pant, like dogs. So they developed other ways to cool off.
How Elephants Use Their Ears to Cool Off
“Elephant ears are exceptionally good at dissipating heat,” says Angela Stöger-Horwath, professor of zoo conservation science at the University of Vienna. Their ears have a large surface area containing thousands of tiny blood vessels.
When elephants pump blood to their ears, the blood moves along these thousands of vessels cooling to the outside temperature. The blood then recirculates through the elephant’s body, helping the animal return to normal body temperature.
Flapping the ears also helps dissipate heat. When elephants flap their ears, they increase the flow of air through these blood vessels, further cooling the blood.
Using a computer model, the researchers demonstrated that elephants primarily lose heat through their ears. “The ears act as adjustable radiators,” explains Stöger-Horwath. “Elephants use them more or less depending on temperature, activity or time of day.”
This cooling strategy even influenced the evolution of elephants. The African elephant has the largest ears of any species because it is exposed to warmer, open landscapes, while Asian elephants have relatively smaller ears because they live in shady forests.
But as the planet warms due to climate change, elephants and their impressive ears could face new challenges. “Elephant ears are a very important adaptive mechanism,” says George Wittemyer, professor of fish, wildlife and conservation biology at Colorado State University. “But they are exposed to heat in new and different ways with global warming. What is beyond their ability to handle?”
How Elephants Communicate With Their Ears
Elephants also use their ears to talk to each other. “They hold their ears in different positions to signal their emotional state or behavioral intention,” says Michael A. Pardo, senior scientist at the nonprofit Elephant Voices. When faced with a threat, they often spread their ears 90 degrees away from their body to appear even larger. This is often used as a warning for others to back off.
In social situations, the movement of an elephant’s ears can signal joy, agitation, dominance, and coordinate group behavior. “When elephants are very emotionally excited, for example when greeting family members after a period of separation, they often flap their ears rapidly,” says Pardo. It’s their way of saying, “Hey, I missed you! Where have you been?”
Elephants are extraordinary listeners
Elephant ears also help them hear a wide range of sounds, especially in the low frequency range. Although elephants certainly make many sounds that humans can hear, most of their communications are at frequencies so low that we cannot hear them. These low-frequency sounds have long wavelengths that trees and vegetation are less likely to interfere with. This allows these sounds to travel much further through dense forests or vast savannahs, making elephants look impressive. Some elephants can even hear sounds more than 10 kilometers away.
Elephants’ ears also help them locate more precisely where a noise is coming from. “Their large ears help channel sound waves into their eardrums,” says Wittemyer. “Elephants use it. You can see when they listen, they stand up and their ears are out.” This can help them identify threats and improve their chances of survival tomorrow.
Although they don’t give elephants the power to fly like Dumbo, their massive ears are a super power of sorts. They help them communicate over long distances, cool off in the heat of the savannah, defend themselves, and even show how much they miss each other.
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