Elephant Wrinkles May Tell a Bigger Story

Elephants use their trunks for an impressive number of purposes, but researchers now realize that the wrinkled skin covering them isn't simply a wizened aesthetic. Per Smithsonian Magazine, new research published in Royal Society Open Science says that, among other things, trunk wrinkles may indicate whether an elephant is a righty or lefty. "We think these wrinkles are very underrated," co-author Michael Brecht tells Science.org.

• Baby wrinkles: The researchers realized that baby elephants have wrinkles, despite a common belief that they're developed with age and use (like smile lines on a human face). In fact, the wrinkles begin forming before birth, notes NPR, suggesting they exist for a purpose.
• Trunk preference: To learn more about the wrinkles, the team studied live African and Asian elephant photographs, tissue samples, and live animals in captivity. The amount of wrinkles on one side of the trunk correlated with whether it was right- or left-trunked (indicated by how the elephants bent their trunks to perform tasks).
• Impressive noses: Trunks are made for sniffing, but have an impressive amount of functions. Made up of about 40,000 muscles (and no bones), elephants use their trunks to pick things up, trumpet, and even peel bananas. The trunk's wrinkles act almost "like hands or elbows," per Science. According to Treehugger, the trunk can also act as a built-in snorkel when elephants need to cross deep water. By comparison, the entire human body has 600 to 700 muscles total (and can't peel a single banana).
• Robot research: The paper's authors hope that the insights they are gaining on elephant trunks will help inform a completely different area of research: soft robotics. Used in disaster relief, soft robots are made from more pliant materials that often mimic how animals move in nature, and elephant trunks are an "ideal model" for improving them.

(Elephants appear to call each other with distinctive 'names.')