MINE GAS AND THE ELEPHANT.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 313, 19 December 1936, Page 2

MINE GAS AND THE ELEPHANT.

The elephant veritably breathes out fire damp, a coalmine gas, and likes to gobble hay in great quantities, but doesn’t digest it very well, a scientist has reported, says the "Chicago Tribune.”

The presence of the breathed-out coalmine gas was described to the New York Academy of Medicine by Dr Francis G. Benedict, director of the nutrition laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, at Boston. Furthermore, Dr Benedict said, it s not truq that elephants live to extreme old ages. They don t do their love making on schedule, either, he added. Dr Benedict presented the elephant as an interesting laboratory for medical men. His topic was The Physiological Case of the Circus Elephant.” There is one part of methane in an elephant’s breath, he said, for every 100 parts of the common breathing exhaust gas, carbon dioxide. He attributed the formation of methane to intestinal fermentation in the elephant.

As a “hay burner” he said the elephant is inefficient. It digests only about 44 per cent, of ths hay' it eats, compared with digestive uses of 50 to 70 per cent, by cows, steers, sheep, and horses. The circus elephant eats fully 150 pounds' of hay daily. Out of this main food the animal produces a volume of heat daily equal to that from the bodies of 30 men. *This rates the elephant as an inferior heater compared with man, for the 30 average men would weigh 1000 to 1500 pounds less than the

average elephant. The animal drinks about 50 gallons of water a day. He takes into his trunk about a •gallon and a-half at a time. ‘‘The extreme ages attributed to elephants are not true,” Dr Benedict said. “The elephant has about the length of life of a man. An elephant 80 years old is an old animal. The average age of the circus elephant is about 3G years. The sex life of elephants appeals, he said, to be very' irregular. The mating instinct is “not pronounced with most females,” but is “more pronounced in males,” said Dr Benedict. Standing up, an elephant breathes/ 10 times a minute; lying down, four to five times. But his heart beats faster lying than standing, 35 times a minute, compared with 28 standing.