Thursday, November 12, 2009

Are elephants really scared of mice?

Bill Y opens a magazine and sees words about elephants and mice. The article explained that elephants are scared of mice. There was a picture of an elephant and a picture of a mouse and without exaggeration, I can safely say, the elephant was many, many times bigger than the mouse. Sometimes I’m gullible and will believe anything. Other times, I venture to the other extreme and will not believe something until I check it out myself. Very often I have massively confused thoughts but I began searching my less that average size brain for anything I knew about elephants but could only remember:

The African Bush Elephant is the world's largest land animal. An adult male will be about 10-11 feet tall (3 to 3.5 metres), 20-24 feet long (6-7 metres) and weigh about 15000 lb (7500 kg). The females are lightly smaller. They can eat 500 lb (225 kg) of food every day, and drink 50 gallons (190 litres) of water. Elephants are much bigger than mice.

I then called on the same organ to see if I had any knowledge of mice. Again, I could only recall vague snippets of information such as:

Most, but not all, of the rodents called mice are members of the rodent subclass Myomorpha, or mouselike rodents. The approximately 1,100 species in this enormous group are classified in several families. The Old World family Muridae includes the now ubiquitous house mouse, as well as a great variety of wild-living Old World species, including the Old World field mouse, the tiny European harvest mouse (Micromys minutus ) and the African tree mice. Mice are much smaller than elephants.

After thinking about elephants and thinking about mice, I turned my attention to wondering if elephants are indeed scared of mice. My conclusion was not entirely brilliant by any means. All I could figure was:

A mouse might get into the elephant's trunk and either hurt or suffocate it and that probably scares the bejaysus out of the elephant. It’s obvious I’m no Elephantologist or Mousist or whatnot and anyway it doesn’t matter. Bill Y

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