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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Oh elephant, what big nerves you have!

The outsize nerve network running from an elephant’s trunk to its brain hints at a highly developed sense of touch.
Two African elephant calves playing together

A young African elephant (Loxodonta africana) wraps its companion in its trunk, which has a nerve cable thicker than that running from the animal’s eyes to its brain. Credit: Martin Harvey/Getty

The nerve circuitry of a female elephant’s trunk weighs a whopping 1.5 kilograms, thanks in part to a nerve bundle that is one of the largest known structures of its type in a living organism1.

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Nature 601, 486 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00114-6

References

  1. Purkart, L. et al. Curr. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.12.051 (2022).

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