Animals with trunks include far more than elephants. Still, the elephant’s trunk is hard to beat: it contains around 40,000 tiny muscles, while the entire human body has roughly 600. That one organ lets an elephant drink, breathe, grab food and greet its relatives.
Biologists call any long, flexible nose a proboscis. Some proboscises are true trunks, grown from a fused nose and upper lip. Others are trunk-like snouts that evolved for completely different jobs, from sniffing out insects to amplifying a roar.
This article covers five of them: the elephant, the tapir, the elephant shrew, the elephant seal and the proboscis monkey. Several are easy for American readers to find, whether at a zoo or on a California beach in winter.
1. Elephant
The elephant is the original trunked animal, and its family tree is long. Elephants belong to the order Proboscidea, which also included woolly mammoths and mastodons that once roamed North America. The two living groups are the African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
Humans have been fascinated by elephant trunks for thousands of years. Carthaginian general Hannibal marched elephants over the Alps in 218 BC, and the animals have been symbols of strength ever since. In the United States, P.T. Barnum bought a famous African elephant named Jumbo from the London Zoo in 1882 and turned him into a touring star.
The trunk itself is a fusion of nose and upper lip. According to IFAW, a trunk can reach up to two metres (seven feet) in length, nearly a quarter of an adult elephant’s body length. Elephants use it for drinking, grabbing food, dusting themselves to repel insects, and even snorkeling.
The tip differs between species. The African elephant has two “fingers” whilst the Asian elephant only has one, according to Born Free. That is why African elephants can pinch small objects, while Asian elephants wrap the tip around them.
Important Note: Elephants do not eat or drink through the trunk like a straw. Born Free explains that elephants use their trunks to pick up and reach for food before placing it in their mouth. For water, they suck it into the trunk and then squirt it into the mouth.
Elephants also have remarkable hearing and low-frequency communication, a topic covered in this list of animals with the best hearing. The trunk plays a role there too, since elephants raise it like a periscope to catch scents and rumble greetings across long distances.
2. Tapir
Tapirs look like pigs wearing a short, stubby elephant trunk, but they are not pigs at all. While they may resemble the pig, tapirs are actually more related to rhinos and horses. That makes them odd-toed ungulates, a group they share with horses and rhinos.
The tapir lineage is old. Fossils show tapir relatives lived across North America and Eurasia millions of years ago, and only four species survive today: the Brazilian (lowland), mountain, Baird’s and Malayan tapirs. Baird’s tapir carries the name of Spencer Baird, an early Smithsonian secretary, which gives the animal a small American connection.
The tapir’s trunk is short but nimble. It is prehensile, highly flexible and able to move in all directions, allowing the animal to grab foliage that would otherwise be inaccessible. Tapirs also use it as a snorkel when they swim or wade through rainforest rivers.
Trunk length varies by species. Malayan tapirs (Tapirus indicus) have the longest snout, and Brazilian tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) the shortest, according to Discover Wildlife. If you are browsing animals alphabetically, tapirs also appear in this roundup of animals that start with T.
3. Elephant Shrew
The elephant shrew is a case of mistaken identity in two directions. It is not an elephant, and for decades scientists treated it as a close cousin of true shrews. DNA evidence later showed otherwise: they are more closely related to aardvarks and sea cows.
These small African mammals belong to the order Macroscelidea. Many researchers now prefer the name “sengi” for them, which avoids the confusion. One example is the golden-rumped elephant shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus), a rabbit-sized species from the coastal forests of Kenya.
Their long, mobile snouts work like tiny trunks. The snout is finely adapted, allowing these creatures to sniff out insects and other food sources hidden beneath the leaf litter. A sengi flicks its nose in every direction as it darts along forest-floor trails it has cleared and memorized.
Sengis also have large, dark eyes suited to spotting predators, so they would fit right in with these animals with big eyes. The group made news in 2020, when scientists confirmed the Somali sengi was still alive in Djibouti after decades without a confirmed sighting. For a broader alphabetical browse, see these animals that start with S.
4. Elephant Seal
The elephant seal brings the trunk story to the American coastline. Elephant seals get their name from the large proboscis of the adult male, reminiscent of an elephant’s trunk. The northern species (Mirounga angustirostris) is the one Californians know best, and it ranges over the Pacific coast of the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
This animal is unrelated to elephants. According to A-Z Animals, despite its name, the elephant seal is not related to the elephant, and its trunk evolved independently. The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) lives around Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands.
The history here is dramatic. This creature was once hunted to the brink of extinction, but its population has since rebounded. Nineteenth-century hunters killed elephant seals for their blubber oil, and the northern population shrank to a tiny remnant before legal protection helped it recover.
Only adult males develop the trunk, and it does a different job than an elephant’s. The nose is not used for picking up food or drinking; male elephant seals use it to amplify their roars during the breeding season. The nose also helps conserve water, since it acts as a rebreather that reabsorbs moisture from exhalations.
Pro Tip: Elephant seals haul out on California beaches each winter to breed and give birth. Public viewing areas such as Año Nuevo State Park and the Piedras Blancas rookery near San Simeon are popular spots, so check each site’s current access rules and reservation requirements before you go.
Important Note: Sources disagree on elephant seal weights because males of the northern and southern species differ in size. One source lists northern males at over 4,500 pounds, while A-Z Animals says the behemoth can weigh up to 11,000 pounds, a figure that fits the larger southern males.
5. Proboscis Monkey
The proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) has what may be the most famous nose among primates. It is endemic to the island of Borneo and lives in coastal areas and mangrove forests. Early Dutch colonists gave it a nickname that translates roughly to “Dutch monkey,” a nod to the big noses they saw on the animals.
Unlike the elephant’s tool-like trunk, this nose is a social signal. Males have much longer and thicker noses than females, and one explanation is sexual selection: females tend to pick males with larger noses, whose vocalizations are louder. The nose swells and amplifies calls that carry through dense mangrove forest.
The rest of the animal is just as unusual. Both sexes have bulging stomachs, webbed toes and long noses. The potbelly houses a multi-chambered stomach that ferments tough leaves, a trait you can compare with other animals with multiple stomachs. The webbed toes help these monkeys swim, which is useful in a swampy habitat, and they appear on this list of animals with webbed feet.
Troops usually include one adult male, several adult females and their young. The species is listed as endangered by the IUCN because mangrove forests on Borneo keep shrinking. If you enjoy oversized noses, you can find more in this collection of animals with big noses.
The table below compares all five trunks side by side.
| Animal | Trunk Type | Main Job | Found In |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elephant | True trunk (nose and upper lip) | Grasping, drinking, smelling, communicating | Africa and Asia |
| Tapir | Short prehensile snout | Grabbing leaves, snorkeling | Central and South America, Southeast Asia |
| Elephant Shrew | Long, mobile snout | Sniffing out insects | Africa |
| Elephant Seal | Inflatable nose (adult males only) | Amplifying roars, conserving moisture | Pacific coast of North America, Antarctic waters |
| Proboscis Monkey | Enlarged, pendulous nose | Attracting mates, amplifying calls | Borneo |
Together, these five animals with trunks show how often evolution reaches for the same solution. Only the elephant and the tapir use theirs as hands, while the shrew, seal and monkey use a trunk-like nose for sniffing, roaring or courting. For more on how lists like this one reach beyond the usual suspects, try the guide to animals with long tongues, another feature that helps animals reach food.