Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren vocal bomb here. Unlike most newborn creatures, elephants look geriatric right out of the womb, thanks in large part to their loose fitting, wrinkly skin. But elephants aren't manipulating the system to collect social security early. Their cracked skin is a clever evolutionary adaptation that protects these animals from the sun's intense rays. African bush elephants are pacaderms, a
group of large animals like hippos and rhinoceroses. The name pacaderms is based on a Greek word that means having thick skin. These enormous, warm blooded animals can weigh around eleven tons that's about ten metric tons and measure up to about thirteen feet tall at the shoulder that's about four meters In short, it's a lot of flesh and bone, all baking in the often brutal African heat, and as it turns out, elephants can't sweat. Is it possible to
perspire with sympathy? Recently, a team of researchers out of Sweden went more than skin deep in their studies of the pacader epidermis. Using both light and electron microscopes, along with intricately detailed computer modeling, the researchers were able to determine the cause of elephants scaly skin. For starters, the scientists found that the crackled appearance of elephant skin is not a sign of aging or skin shrinkage, as is
often the case with other species. Rather, it is a purposeful design resulting from the stress of the skin bending. These cracks allow the skin to retain moisture and dirt, which reduces the harmful effects of the sun and prevents harmful swings in body temperature. The barrier also wards off some types of pests and parasites. Elephant skin, unlike human skin, is resistant to shedding, so the layers, particularly the super tough top layer, the stratum corneum, stick around longer before
sloughing off. It also has a lot more keratin than human skin, so it's more durable, keratin being the stuff that makes up fingernails and is a small presence in our own skin. As this thick hide is subject to everyday movement like bending and twisting, it quickly wrinkles with layer upon layer of wrinkly skin serving as a complex system of channels the capture and hold moisture and dirt, so when you see elephants basking in sloppy pools spraying water in mud to and fro, they aren't just doing
it for fun. The mud settles into the tense cracks in their skin, some of which are just a micrometer across about fifty times smaller than the naked human eye can detect. Continually wetted, the skin remains permeable, helping the animals stay cooler. And interestingly, elephant skin doesn't just randomly wrinkle.
It cracks in geometric shapes that approximate other common sights in our world, from drying mud to heat shattered asphalt, or even geometrically precise rock breakage like the giants causeway in Ireland. The result is a durable cooling system that keeps these gigantic mammals from cooking in their own thick
skin on steamy summer days. With their huge bodies and constant sun exposure, it would be easy to assume that elephants often fall victim to skin cancer and its side effects, but as it turns out, cancer is relatively rare in these animals, thanks in part to a gene called P fifty three, Elephant body chemistry identifies DNA abnormalities, and then Nix's cells that seem doomed to tumors. Scientists starts studying these so called zombie jeans to see how they might
affect human biology too. Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other wrinkly topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com