Elephant trunks use an adaptable prehensile grip

2023

Article

hi

Elephants have long been observed to grip objects with their trunk, but little is known about how they adjust their strategy for different weights. In this study, we challenge a female African elephant at Zoo Atlanta to lift 20–60 kg barbell weights with only its trunk. We measure the trunk’s shape and wrinkle geometry from a frozen elephant trunk at the Smithsonian. We observe several strategies employed to accommodate heavier weights, including accelerating less, orienting the trunk vertically, and wrapping the barbell with a greater trunk length. Mathematical models show that increasing barbell weights are associated with constant trunk tensile force and an increasing barbell-wrapping surface area due to the trunk’s wrinkles. Our findings may inspire the design of more adaptable soft robotic grippers that can improve grip using surface morphology such as wrinkles.

@article{Schulz23-BB-Lift,
  title = {Elephant trunks use an adaptable prehensile grip},
  author = {Schulz, Andrew and Reidenberg, Joy and Wu, Jia Ning and Tang, Cheuk Ying and Seleb, Benjamin and Mancebo, Josh and Elgart, Nathan and Hu, David},
  journal = {Bioinspiration and Biomimetics},
  volume = {18},
  month = feb,
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1088/1748-3190/acb477},
  month_numeric = {2}
}