Elephant sense of smell & sneezing?
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by Snorticus
How acute is their sense of smell and do they ever sneeze?
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
Elephants have an exceptional sense of smell. They were even trained in South Africa as "bio-detectors" to see how they can use their sense of smell to detect explosives, landmines and poachers ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/11/bomb-sniffing-elephants/70149110/ ).
They do sneeze, and you can notice it when you hear a long blow. I haven´t found a nice video of it so that you can figure it out, sorry 😦
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
now a bit more scientific 😃
elephants have a very special sense of smell, and their olfactory part of their brain (bulbus olfactorius) is very large. You can often see how the elephants lift their trunk in all directions as a way of recognizing their surroundings.
They react amazingly good to chemical signals coming from other elephants by using their vomeronasal system (I have already talked about it in the Elephant Tuesdays blog, remember?). They would smell something they are interested in (for example, urine) and put their trunk in their mouth to identify the smell with the help of the Vomeronasal organ.
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
Here the link to the blog post where the olfactory function of their trunk was mentioned (if I remember right, it was Mimi´s favourite 😃 ): http://chimpandsee.blogspot.de/2016/12/elephanttuesdays-elephants-trunk.html
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by akalan scientist
This came up when I google elephant sneezes, so cute but is it really a sneeze Nuria?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtIz1u8g1F0Posted
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
hmmm...I saw it too, but here I´m not sure if it´s a sneeze or just an alarm call...s/he is excited by the human´s presence (look at her/his ears and tail). I didn´t want to mention this video (althought it is very funny), because I´m not really sure if it´s a sneeze. Sorry, if you wait some minutes, @Pugli will come back home and I can show it to him, let´s see what he says.
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
Great!!! he agrees with me. He says that it´s just a fright, not a sneeze 😃
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by akalan scientist
Ah okay thanks guys 😃 Would love to hear/see a sneeze if you do find a good clip though.
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by NuriaM scientist, moderator
I will check it for sure, no worries!!
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by Snorticus
Looking forward to hearing an elephant sneeze, hope one is out there somewhere 😉
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