Andrew Schulz visited Africa with his mother when he was a teenager. During the trip, he fell in love with elephants. He became interested in how elephants use their trunks. Elephants use their long, flexible noses for many things. They use them to breathe, grasp food, and even suck up water and spray it into their mouths.
Today, Schulz is a Ph.D. student. He is studying mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He’s trying to learn more about the biomechanics of elephants’ trunks. Biomechanics is the study of how living things move. Schulz wanted to study how elephants eat. “It’s one of those things you always see, but no one really knows what’s going on,” he says.
Schulz performed a series of experiments with a 34-year-old African elephant named Kelly at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia. Elephants are known to use their trunks like people use their hands to pick up food and carry it to their mouths. But Schulz made a surprising discovery: Elephants also use their tube-shaped noses like a vacuum to suction up certain treats.