About the Elephant

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 26, 1 February 1937, Page 9

About the Elephant

BREATHES OUT FIRE DAMP The elephant veritably breathes out firedamp, a coal mine gas, and likes to gobble hay in great quantities, but doesn't digest it very well, a scientist has reported (says the Chicago Tribune). The presence of the breathed-out coal mine gas was described to the New York Academy of Medicine by Dr. Franscis G. Benedict, director of the nutrition laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, at Boston.

Furthermore, Dr. Benedict said, it’s not true that elephants livo to extreme old age. They don't do their lovemaking on schedule either, he added. Dr. Benedict presented the elephant as an interesting laboratory for medical men. His topic was ‘The Physiological Case of the Circus Elephant.’ There is one part of methane in an elephant's breath, he said, for every 100 parts of the common breathing exhaust gas, carbon dioxide. Ho attributed the formation of methane to intestinal fermentation in the elephant. As a “hay burner," he said, the elephant is inefficient. It digests only about 44 per cent, of the hay it eats, compared with digestive uses of 50 to 70 per cent, by cows, steers, sheep, and horses. The circus elephant eats fully 1501 b of hay daily. Out of this main food the animal pro-

duces a volume of heat daily equal to that from the bodies of 30 men. This rates the elephant as an inferior heater compared with man, for the 30 average men would weigh 1,000 to 1,500 pounds less than the average elephant. Tho animal drinks about 50 gallons of water a day. He takeß into his trunk about a gallon and a half at a time. “The extreme ages attributed to elephants are not true," Dr. Benedict said. “The elephant'has about the length of life of a man. An. elephant 80 years old is an old animal. The average age of tho circus elephant is about 33 years.'' Tflie sex life of elephants •'appears, he said, to bo very irregular. The mating instinct is “not pronounced with most females," but is “more pronounced in males," said Dr. Benedict. Standing up, an elephant breathes 10 times a minute; lying quietly, four to five times. But his heart beats faster lying than standig, 35 times a minute, compared with 28 standing.