7 Animals With Big Noses (And Why They Have Them) (2023)

Core items:

• An elephant's trunk resembles a human's hands. The elephant trunk is multifunctional, used for bathing, holding a branch to kill flies, making tools and even comforting babies.
• The proboscis monkey's 6-inch nose helps attract females. For women, a long nose means a large body, which means better protection. These polygynous monkeys use their snouts to make a loud mating call.
• The elephant shrew's long, thin nose gives it an advantage in tracking down insects and invertebrates on which to feed. A keen sense of smell isn't the only super strength of this tiny mammal; They also have keen eyesight and hearing.

A nose with two nostrils is a trait shared by almost all animals, and with good reason. The nose gives us an additional sense through its ability to smell, but it also serves as a critical pathway that allows air to flow to the lungs. But while most animals use their noses solely for these two purposes, a few have evolved appendages that are much more elongated. As is often the case with evolutionary change, those long noses serve a purpose. Here are seven of the animals with the biggest noses — and why they evolved them in the first place.

No. 7: Elephant shrew - Nose as a meal eater

Big noses are often a way to compensate for poor senses elsewhere, but that's not the case with theelephant shrew. this tinymammalIt has exceptional eyesight, hearing and a keen sense of smell. Their long noses may look like a scaled-down version of the trunk elephants carry, but they're not as flexible. Instead, they use their noses much like aardvarks - sweeping the ground to destabilize theminsectsis smallinvertebratesand then eat them. It is an effective technique that has allowed them to spread worldwide.Africa.

These animals play a crucial role in their ecosystem by managing native insect populations. You can rely on them to manage ant and termite populations where they are prevalent. They also use their large noses to sniff out each other's scents - and marking territory with scent glands is a common social habit of these monogamous, territorial midgets.

Although it looks very similarant-eater, aAardvarkis more related to thatElephant🇧🇷 And although these creatures cannot use their long snouts to craft tools and wield weapons, they can use them to hunt. An aardvark rips up nests of termites and ants with its claws and then sucks up these insects in vast numbers with its long nose. An aardvark caneat up to 50,000 insectsin a single night and they inhale it without chewing. Aardvarks are nocturnal scavengers with poor eyesight, so they rely on their nose as their primary means of navigation. Ten bones in the nose create a sense of smell that surpasses anyonedog breed.

The aardvark shows how dramatically evolution can take place to fill a very specific niche within an ecosystem. Through patient evolution, aardvarks have evolved the ability to completely seal their nostrils to prevent clogginginsectsand dust.

#5: Star Nose Mole - Nose as a navigational aid

Although many animals use their sense of smell to navigate dark environments, none do so in the same way as humans.Star-nosed mole🇧🇷 His face is covered in a wriggling mass of tentacles. The 22 tentacles surrounding its nose contain an estimated 100,000 nerve endings — more than five times as many as the human body.MenschHand. That's quite an achievement considering these moles are less than half a foot long. In the dark tunnels and shallow waters this mole navigates, sight is far from essential - and the star-nosed mole has developed a unique way of seeing the world around him.

Its big-nosed tentacles all move in unison, and each can touch up to ten objects in a second. It's hard to imagine what this practically supernatural sense of touch must feel like, but it allows them to effectively map their subterranean surroundings and identify and assess prey such as worms and insects in milliseconds. This sensory input is completely different from their actual olfactory abilities - although they do have the ability to smell underwater.

#4: Proboscis Monkey - Nose as a built-in amplifier

Often a long nose is there to help navigate a dark world or find a meal, but sometimes it's built to attract a mate.proboscis monkeysare known for their huge bulbous noses, but males have much larger noses—and males with larger noses tend to be more successful with the opposite sex. While these noses serve no functional purpose outside of the mating process, they are an example of how seemingly innocuous traits can result in specific sexual selection preferences in a species.

In this case, it is due to several overlapping factors. Holding male proboscis monkeysHaren'sof women, and success - at least in the evolutionary sense - is based on having as large a harem as possible. Averaging about half a foot in length, these noses can project a male monkey's mating call to reach a larger group of females — but large noses also tend to correspond with larger bodies, suggesting that a male can detect threats and can chase competitors. The researchers even correlated a large nose with a proportionately small group of canines — a trait they say improves their efficiency as foragers.

#3: Tapirs - Nose as food grabber

A long noseAntresembles an elephant's trunk, and the similarities go beyond appearance. This animal's noses are prehensile, allowing them to navigate objects in their environment in a rather sophisticated way. As in the elephant, this trunk straddles both the tapir's upper lip and nose. Different species of tapirs can be found in the jungle, grasslands, and even some mountainous regionsCentraleSouth America, and they all use this extended snout primarily to pull plants and fruit from branches that would otherwise be unreachable.

Unlike the aardvark, tapirs don't rely on their nose as a substitute for being nearly blind. Although they don't have the best eyesight in the animal kingdom, these animals are good at navigating by sight and better by hearing. But their proboscis helps enhance their sense of smell. By peeling the proboscis back and away from the mouth and exposing the teeth, they can activate what is known as the Flehmen response and alert themselves to everything from food sources to threats to potential mates.

Öfish seenit doesn't just have a big nose - this animal has a big nose that's suspiciously shaped like a chainsaw. Their long, thin, flat noses are lined with pointed scales. And although their noses cannot be sped up, they are an effective tool for hunting. Scientists have long observed sawfish using their extraordinarily large noses to sift through the sand and findcrustaceanschew.

But recent revelations have made it clear that they also turn up their noses to kill prey. And scrubbing loose sand isn't the only way to use your nose on the hunt. Small sensors are fully embedded in itof fishnose, and make it possible to identify the electric fields emitted by living organisms.

Sawfish does not attackpeople, but that seems less reassuring when you consider the fact that these fish are among the largest in the sea, some growing to 25 feet in length. They might accidentally step on one as they live in shallow, murky water.

#1: Elephant - Nose as a general purpose tool

It used to be thought that humans are the only animals capable of using tools, but elephants refute this theory with the creative and diverse ways they manipulate their flexible noses. An elephant's trunk can be up to two meters long and weighs up to 180 kilograms and is formed from the fusion of the nose and lip. Elephants have been seen grabbing branches with their trunks and using them to knock flies away and scratch their leathery skin. And as a sign of superior intelligence, they even use their trunks to tear down branches and turn them into more effective tools.

But in addition to carrying and throwing objects into the environment, the trunk can also serve as an extremely sensitive organ of touch. Trunks are used to touch and pet other elephants to show affection, and they use these trunks to understand the texture, shape, and weight of objects around them. elephants, like thatindian elephanteAsian elephant, have even been seen laying their trunks on the ground to sense vibrations from afar.

Animals with Big Noses Summary

Be continued...

Find out more facts about creepy crawlies!

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