Why do Elephants Have Big Ears?

Part of the answer to this curious but interesting question is: The better to year you with. Some elephants have much larger ears than others but all use the large outer ear structures to help them hear. However, this isn’t the only task for these gigantic, flapping lobes.

Only three species of elephant survive in the 21st century. Two of these live in Africa – the bush elephant and the forest elephant. The third species is the Asian elephant or Indian elephant. Each of these distinct types has developed ear structure and size that works for them in their natural habitat. Just as they developed long trunks to help them eat and drink (their heads are a long way from the ground) they developed large ears for better hearing and for other reasons.

African elephants have much larger ears than the Asian/Indian elephant. In fact, the African species is larger overall. Females of the Asian species don’t develop outer tusks, while both males and females do in Africa. But they do have one thing in common – they use their ears to hear and to help them stay cool. Elephants are native to very warm climates and use these large ears as fans to keep air moving around their head and upper body.

While these ears appear very large to us, they are made of thin skin, with strong cartilage on the outer edges. Elephant ears also have a large supply of blood vessels of various sizes. As they move their ears through the air, the blood in these vessels cools and then moves on to cool other parts of the body.

We now have three separate reasons for those large elephant ears – hearing, fanning and cooling the blood for circulation. Studies have shown that the blood coming into an elephant’s ear cools five degrees or more (up to 10 degrees) before being circulated to the rest of the elephant’s body.

But there is another question: Why are the ears of Asian elephants smaller than those on the two African types? The simple answer is that African elephants live in a region around the equator, among the hottest locations anywhere on the planet. They have bigger ears to provide more of the cooling effect described earlier. Asian elephants live in warm climates too but the temperatures are not as extreme as those at the equator.

Through close observation biologists have also found that elephants use their ears for signalling other elephants. In some cases, a male elephant may move his ears or wave them back and forth in a certain way to let another male elephant know he is in an aggressive mood. This may be an attempt to look bigger and more dangerous. Studies have also shown that the musky scent elephants give off during the mating season comes from glands behind the ears. Flapping the ears may help spread the scent at this critical time. So, when someone asks why elephants have such big ears, start by saying, “Well, there are several reasons.”