CHAPTER XXIV 



ELEPHANTS 

 Family Elephantidcs 



The elephants are perhaps best characterized by their 

 proboscis, or trunk, which in the true elephant has developed 

 into a grasping or prehensile organ several feet in length 

 and capable of as delicate manipulation as the hand of the 

 higher apes. The great length of the proboscis in the 

 typical elephants has given rise to the name Proboscidce, by 

 which the order is known. This group comprises the living 

 elephants and all of the fossil elephant-like mammals, the 

 most primitive of which were quite unlike modern elephants, 

 being no larger than tapirs, with very short trunks and 

 tusks. The great bodily bulk of the living members, how- 

 ever, is quite characteristic of the family Elephantidce. 

 Combined with the great bodily size we find an adaptive 

 leg structure, the legs being straight and columnar so as to 

 support the great body weight, a condition also common 

 to some extinct groups of giant mammals and such colossal 

 reptiles as the giant dinosaurs. The primitive or remote 

 ancestral elephant-like mammals had bent or angulated 

 limbs similar to those of the hoofed mammals. The knees 

 are placed low, being well outside the body and very differ- 

 ent from the position they occupy in the horse and other 

 hoofed mammals. The feet are primitive in structure, being 

 evenly five-toed, but are united at the base into a more or 



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