Reading and vocabulary. African Elephant

An adult African elephant's trunk is about seven feet (two meters) long! It's actually an elongated nose and upper lip. Like most noses, trunks are for smelling.

When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much as 2 gallons (7.5 liters) of water into its trunk at a time. Then it curls its trunk under, sticks the tip of its trunk into its mouth, and blows. Out comes the water, right down the elephant's throat.

Since African elephants live where the sun is usually blazing hot, they use their trunks to help them keep cool. First they squirt a trunkful of cool water over their bodies. Then they often follow that with a sprinkling of dust to create a protective layer of dirt on their skin. Elephants pick up and spray dust the same way they do water—with their trunks.

Elephants also use their trunks as          when they wade in deep water. An elephant's trunk is controlled by many         . Two fingerlike parts on the tip of the trunk allow the elephant to perform delicate maneuvers such as         a berry from the ground or          a single leaf off a tree. Elephants can also use its trunk to grasp an entire tree        and pull it down to its mouth and to yank up clumps of grasses and shove the greenery into their        .

When    [a, an] elephant      [get, gets] a whiff of something interesting, it sniffs the air with      [its, it's] trunk raised up like    [a, an] submarine periscope. If threatened, an elephant will also use its trunk to make loud trumpeting noises as a warning.