It turns out that the elephant's nose can suck water at a speed of 540 km / h, and the speed of sucked water is more than 1.5 times faster than the Shinkansen
Elephants with long noses eat 200 kg of grass and trees a day and drink more than 100 liters of water. A study by Andrew Schultz and colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology reveals that the nose of an elephant, which can be handled dexterously like a human hand, has a suction power that can suck up water at a speed of 540 km / h. I did.
Suction feeding by elephants | Journal of The Royal Society Interface
Elephants inhale water at 330 mph | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/elephant-trunks-are-supersuckers.html
Schultz and colleagues thought that the structure of the elephant's nose could be applied to a robot that grabs an object, and worked with a zoo veterinarian to observe the elephant sucking water from the aquarium with its nose. The aquarium used was 29.9 cm x 29.9 cm x 48 cm, and 19 liters of water and 50 g of chia seeds were placed in the aquarium to make the flow of water easier to understand.
As a result of observation, the elephant was able to suck up 3.7 liters of water in just 1.5 seconds. Schultz et al. Estimate that the speed at which an elephant sucks water is 540 km / h, which is more than 1.5 times faster than the 320 km / h Shinkansen. In addition, when observing how the elephant was sucking water using ultrasonic waves, the elephant contracted the muscles, dilated the nostrils by up to 30%, and increased the volume of the nasal cavity by 64%. I heard that I also understood. In addition, several experiments have shown that elephants can store up to 5.5 liters of water in their noses. You can check the state of the experiment in the following video.
Elephant Trunks Inspiration for New Robots-YouTube
Experiments by Schultz et al. Have shown that chia seeds are sucked up mainly in the nostrils.
'I thought the nasal cavity of the elephant was smaller than the amount of water I had inhaled, so I couldn't understand how it was sucking up water until I saw the nostrils expanding on an ultrasound image,' Schultz said. He wants to keep the amount of water he sucks below 5.5 liters, which is 110% of the original volume of the nostrils. '
In addition, Schultz and colleagues are ascertaining 'Does elephants change their nose-using behavior depending on food?' In this study, Schultz and colleagues cut turnip-like root vegetable rutabaga into 2 cm squares and placed them on a flat plate, and when the number of rutabaga was less than 10, they picked it up directly with their noses. It was found that if it exceeds 10 pieces, it will be sucked up with the nose. 'There was a vacuum cleaner,' Schultz and colleagues said when sucking up. Next, in an experiment using thin tortilla chips , the elephant was able to pick up the chips with almost no cracking.
Schultz et al. 'Elephants have a special respiratory system that allows them to use both quick suction and gentle suction to pick up chips. In the field of robotics, suction is a method for grasping objects. Although used, this study has the potential to provide new hints for robotics design. '
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