5. The Elephant's Child

Available for over a year

Vivienne Parry considers another of the animals of Rudyard Kipling's much loved Just So Stories for Children. Assisted by researchers of 'infinite sagacity', she sets out to discover whether his fantasies contain any grains of truth? Kipling' tells of the elephant got his trunk from a crocodile on the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo river. But does science understand how their trunk really evolved? Vivienne talks to researchers Kathleen Smith and her husband William Kier about the wonders of muscular hydrostats (trunks, tongues and tentacles to you and me). Biologist Jon Hutchinson ponders the elephant's aquatic origins. Excerpts read by Samuel West Producer: Rami Tzabar First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2014.