The amazing elephant trunk

An elephant spends 16 to 18 hours per day feeding. How does an elephant feed efficiently? We present experiments with African elephants at the Atlanta Zoo and dissections of elephant trunks at the Smithsonian Institution. Elephants can suck up tortilla chips or six liters of water within a second. These feats are made possible by the use of radial muscles in trunk which expand the nostrils by 30 percent in diameter, increasing the suction force available for picking up small objects. We demonstrate the trunk can use self-weight to apply jamming forces to collections of small particles, reducing the number of trips it needs to move them. We build simple silicon mimics of the trunk, demonstrating that the trunk's stiff skin and wrinkle patterns can aid in its stability.