Swimming trunks: transparent tank shows pachyderms paddling August 9, 2024

An Asian elephant swims in a pool with transparent sides at Fuji Safari Park in the city of Susono (Yuichi YAMAZAKI)

By AFP -Agence France Presse

Swimming trunks: transparent tank shows pachyderms paddling

Katie Forster

Paddling with chunky legs and using their trunks as a snorkel, the elephants at Fuji Safari Park in Japan are taking a dip in their summer pool - with every graceful movement visible thanks to a special transparent tank.

Visitors are usually surprised to discover that elephants can swim, but the hefty creatures are very good at it, zoo manager Daisuke Takeuchi told AFP on Thursday.

The park's six Asian elephants swim daily in the summer months, sometimes entering the 65-meter channel - the length of five parked buses in a row - together.

"Especially on hot days, they can't wait to get into the water, so when the water is ready, they run energetically and splash around," Takeuchi said.

The park, which is near Mount Fuji in central Japan, installed a pool with transparent sides in 2015, and the Laotian elephant keepers clean and change the water daily.

Japan's scorching summers are getting hotter and last month the country had its hottest July on record.

To cool off in the heat, elephants spray water on their bodies and shake their big ears like a fan, so the main purpose of bathing is to remove parasites and dirt from their skin.

Elephant expert Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel, assistant professor of Asian and African Area Studies at Kyoto University, said that elephants use their "remarkable" instinctive swimming skills to migrate between habitats by crossing rivers.

"But swimming may not be their daily activity, until and unless circumstances demand it," such as during floods, said Sharma Pokharel.

Elephants also use bodies of water when they have leg wounds or other injuries, a habit that "helps reduce the strain caused by the weight of the body", he added.

The fact that they use their trunk to breathe means that they can swim long distances and "in the wild, they have no choice but to swim in search of food," said Takeuchi.

"But in our zoo, instead of looking for food, they swim for fun and, as their bodies get colder and it's nice to cool off, they happily enter the water."

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