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Have you ever watched a video of an elephant drinking water and wondered how exactly they can store so much water in their trunks? Well, research from the Georgia Institute of Technology has found that elephants can dilate their nostrils which allows them to store up to 5.5 liters of water at a time. In addition to that, they can suck up liquid at 3 liters per second, which is a speed 30x faster than a human sneeze (150 meters per second.)

The team studied elephants as they ate various foods. For foods in cubes, the animal would grab them, sucking up cubes and making a loud vacuuming sound, or a sound like a person slurping noodles. They also gave the elephants a tortilla chip and measured the force applied to suck it up. Sometimes the animal would press down on the chip and breathe in, suspending it on the tip of their trunk without breaking it. Other times, the elephant would apply suction from a distance, drawing the chip to the edge of its trunk. The trunk can be used to grab, but it can also blow things away in the same way a leaf blower would, or draw things in like a vacuum. 

The researchers timed the duration of the elephant’s suction and measured the volume of liquid they were able to inhale. In 1.5 seconds, the trunk sucked up 3.7 liters, the equivalent of 20 toilets flushing at once. By contracting their trunk muscles, the elephant dilates its nostrils up to 30%, expanding the nasal volume by 64%. Based on the pressures applied by the trunk muscles, the team believes that elephants can inhale at speeds comparable to 300-mph bullet trains. Remember that the next time you see one of the girls playing in water!

Photo of Bambi spraying water from her trunk