Why do elephants suck up water and spit it out with their nose?

Happy Elephant Week! Every episode this week answers a different question about our magnificent and ginormous elephant friends. Have you ever accidentally gotten water up your nose? Imagine if you could slurp up a whole bunch of water with your snoot! You’d probably want to spray it around, right? That’s something that elephants do all the time – but why? We asked psychology professor and elephant expert Joshua Plotnick to help us find the answer.

Got a pachyderm puzzler?  Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help find an elephantastic answer!