2007小学生科普英语文选.docVIP

Elephants are giants! Elephant in Africa usually live in forests or on the savannah. Did you know that African elephants are the largest of all land animals? They and their Asian cousins are also the last animals with trunks still alive today. Find out all about these giant mammals. （How much do you know about the main body parts of an elephant, trunk, tusk, ear, feet, sole, etc.? Let’s have a look.） Trunks with no bones An elephant’s trunk is both a nose and an upper lip. An adult elephant’s trunk can be up to 1.5m long and can weigh up to 200kg. It’s made up of muscles. That’s why it is so flexible and can twist in every direction. Elephants use their trunks to gather fruit, suck up water to drink, breathe and smell as well as make sounds. Ivory tusks An elephant’s tusks are two huge incisor teeth in its upper jaws. The tusks continue to grow through the elephant’s life. They are made of ivory, which is very precious to humans. The longest tusks recorded were 3.5m long and the heaviest were 100kg. Ear we go! Elephants’ ears are huge. They’re covered in very thin skin and have a total surface area of 4㎡. Many blood vessels run through them. Elephants use their ears as fans when they get too hot. It flaps them and , as the blood flows through their ears, it cools down by as much as 5℃. When the weather is cool, elephant don’t flap their ears at all. Cushioned feet Elephants’ feet have four toes at the front and three at the back with a soft wide pad in the middle. The pad spreads out and gives the elephant grip when it walks over slippery surfaces. On hard ground, elephants don’t leave any footprints. Protect elephants There were two million elephants in Africa in 1960. After that, hundreds of thousands were killed because their ivory tusks were worth a lot of money. By 1989, there were less than 500,000 elephants left in Africa. So in order to protect them, international trade in ivory and other elephant products was banned. In April, 2000, full of African countrie