The baby elephant has found an interesting toy. He plays with the trunk all the time. In fact, the trunk of an elephant is a modification of the nose and upper lip. From their fusion and elongation was an amazing organ: it has no bones and very little adipose tissue, but there are almost 150 thousand small muscles.
Because of this, the elephant’s trunk is also suitable for very fine manipulations, to pick up a raw egg, break the nut shell without crushing the nut to remove the speck from the eyes — and for hard work: adult breaking can lift the trunk up to 350 pounds.
About how elephant got a trunk, there are several hypotheses.
The first-water: the trunk is stretched at elephant embryos at very early stages of development therefore some evolutionary biologists consider that the General ancestor of trunk could acquire a trunk long before emergence of modern elephants.
And some of these ancestors spent their entire lives in water, like manatees, or most of it, like hippos, and the long trunk allowed them to breathe out of the water.
This theory is supported by some features of elephant anatomy — in particular, the thick wall of the sternum between the lungs and the ribs, designed to protect the lungs from high pressure.
