Elephants walking on tiptoes

Leg elephant - it's not just a tool of movement: they play an important role in creating holes where water can collect, for digging up edible roots out of the ground and to navigate the difficult terrain.



Drawing lines on the elephant's foot as individual as fingerprints in humans. With age, this figure varies, so the depth, size and number of "cracks" can be seen on the age of the animal: the young elephants stop just dotted lines, and in old specimens smoothed lines on foot or nearly erased.

On each leg of the elephant grows five fingers, but his fingers, these are not seen as almost entirely covered with nails. The most amazing thing is that the nails are horny shields for delicate fingers. They grow into the skin but not in the flesh, and in fact with the fingers are not connected.

Despite its size, the elephants can walk almost silently because the lower part of their legs is elastic spongy "cushion". Interestingly, the legs are arranged so that the rear part of the foot as it is raised, and with the earth contacts only the front part, which means that the elephants are always on their toes.

via factroom.ru