Why do elephants have such big ears?

An elephant’s ears are not mainly for hearing. They are giant cooling fans.

Elephants are huge and live in hot places, and they cannot sweat. Heat builds up inside their bodies with nowhere to go.

Each ear is thin and criss-crossed with blood vessels close to the skin. When the elephant flaps its ears, air flows over them and cools the blood by several degrees. The cooled blood then travels back into the body. On a hot afternoon an elephant can pump all its blood through its ears many times.

African elephants live in hotter, more open country, so their ears are bigger than those of Asian elephants like the ones in Kerala. Ears are also used for signalling: spread wide, they mean ‘back off’.