The beautiful textures and details of an elephant’s protective layer are always fascinating to admire. Hidden beneath the surface, there is more than meets the eye with these gentle giants’ skin, and I’m going to share with you the secrets of why an elephant’s skin is so important to their survival.

A large Elephant Bull strides across an open clearing.

Interesting Facts About Elephant Skin

Firstly, here are some little-known truths about their skin:

• The skin alone of an elephant can weigh as much as 2000 pounds or over 900 kg.
• The skin can be as thick as an inch on areas such as the back and as thin as 1/10 of an inch on the ears and around the mouth.
• Despite its rough and dry appearance, the skin is delicate and may be soft to the touch.
• To cool down, elephants will spray mud or water behind their ears. This allows the circulating blood to cool down faster as an elephant can pump all its blood through its ears every 20 minutes.
• The skin colour of an elephant will change depending on the colour of the mud and sand used on their bodies.
• An elephant’s stomach area needs extra support to hold the weight of its organs. The animals have a fibroelastic sheet of muscles that span their stomach area.

An Elephant sprays itself with brown soil.

Elephant skin is designed to protect them from the rough conditions of the African bushveld, such as the scorching sun, the dry climate, and the sharp thorns on the trees from which they feed. Their skin serves as their outer protection and performs the vital role of keeping them cool.

Do Elephants Have Sweat Glands?

The quick answer is yes—but not as many as humans. One way a person regulates body temperature is by sweating. Humans have sweat glands throughout their skin, whereas elephants have very few, which are located on the feet, near the cuticles. This results in skin that is dry to the touch but soft and supple. If you look at an elephant on a hot day, you may see a wet area around the top of their toenails.

Although an elephant’s skin is thick, the blood vessels and nerves are relatively close to the surface, and they have few sweat glands for heat dissipation. This is where dusting and mudding help to protect the skin from the sun and insects, assist with temperature regulation, and encourage the shedding of dead skin cells.

Elephant skin lacks moisture, so it must be loose, especially around the joints, to provide the necessary flexibility for motion. The wrinkles in an elephant’s skin help to retain external moisture, keeping the skin in good condition.

Elephants are going to need more than just moisturiser for their wrinkly skin, which lacks moisture helping prevent the loss of water in hot climates. The loose wrinkly nature also allows for more movement and flexibility as the skin cannot stretch.

What are Elephant Skin ‘Hot Spots’?

Elephants can fine-tune their body temperature using “hot spots” scattered around their bodies, according to research which questions the widely held belief that the animals use their giant ears to stay cool. This image is of an Asian elephant, but it is believed to also be the case with African elephants.

By directing their blood supply near the surface of small patches of skin scattered around their bodies, elephants can lose heat rapidly, allowing them to fine-tune their internal temperature. Typically, animals with large bodies tend to retain more heat because, relative to their bulk, they have a small surface area for heat to escape from.

Professor Fritz Vollrath, an expert on elephant behaviour at Oxford University, said it was possible the hot spots provided localized cooling for specific organs.

“This is an interesting study as it shows that elephants can flood blood through their ears independently and can open and close specific areas of their skin for blood cooling” -Fritz Vollrath.

After we watched a small breeding herd of elephants splash themselves with mud at a nearby wallow this bull then dust bathed. The sodium-rich sand was a brilliant contrast as he covered himself with the dust.

Why Do Elephants Dust Bath?

An elephant usually appears to be the same colour as the soil where it lives, but its natural skin colour is greyish-black. This is because elephants take frequent mud baths or dust themselves with soil to protect against insects and the heat of the sun. The dust disturbs biting insects living in the nether regions of an elephant’s body and provides a protective layer on the skin shielding it from the sun’s rays.

The trunk serves as a very useful tool to scoop up soil and then spray it behind the ears and on its back.

As we enter the drier and colder months of the year, elephants exchange mud wallowing for dust bathing. Due to water holes drying up and dusty areas increasing around the reserve, elephants prefer to use dust as a temperature and insect control mechanism. Dusting is also considered a comfort behaviour and is often performed after bathing, during social situations, and when elephants are anxious.

Although it was assumed by biologists that elephants evolved to grow large ears to help them stay cool, new findings by researchers have revealed that elephants are also able to cool down by increasing the blood flow to skin patches in other parts of their bodies. This is a fascinating discovery about the skin of an African elephant and adds to the many reasons why I love spending time with these majestic creatures.