Wednesday 3 March 2010

African Elephants Can Jump!

How I Heard About This: From an early age I had heard the elephants were the ONLY mammals that couldn't jump. I thought I'd look it up.
Main Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1461/followup-african-elephants-can-jump
Backup Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1462/can-elephants-jump
Topic: Animals/Biology

Details: As I started to look into this I found a ton of websites and books that claimed that Elephants couldn't jump, but they weren't alone. In fact, there are many mammals that can't jump, for example the hippopotamus, whale and giraffe. That's pretty obvious, but suddenly I found a website that talks of the "Elephant Jumping Festival" which is held annually in Nairobi.

So it turns out that African Elephants CAN jump!

http://www.zootorah.com/essays/jumpingelephant.pdf

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