"I was always told not to drink alcohol through a straw, but Dumbo drank through his trunk, so it's no wonder his hallucinations were so strange and vivid."
The mistaken belief that elephants drink through their trunks. The trunk is simply a device to get the water to their mouth, like how you may use your hands to get water out of a pond and bring it to your mouth. An elephant's respiratory tract is actually quite similar to ours — if an elephant were to drink through its trunk, its lungs would fill with water and it would drown. Think about what would happen if you were to inhale on a straw with your nose instead of your mouth. It would be painful, wouldn't it? It would be just as painful for an elephant to drink through its nose. An elephant stupid enough to try this would die. If all elephants did this, elephants would be extinct by now.—Elliot, "10 Scariest Disney Moments" on Eskify
This is why you will never see an elephant drink through its trunk in a live-action work. Elephants in cartoons and video games, however, can drink through their trunks and be perfectly fine. Can be an honest mistake on the creator's part, or done for comedic effect.
Examples
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Fan Works
Films — Animated
- Dumbo: At one point, the title character drinks beer from a barrel through his trunk.
- Horton Hears A Who: In a brief scene, Horton is sitting and enjoying a drink, of course by sticking his trunk in the glass and sucking it up.
- Discussed in Ice Age: Continental Drift. A chick asks Ellie if when she drinks water through her trunk, it tastes like boogers. She replies that it sometimes does.
Literature
- Subverted in Gogo Ndlovu: The Grandmother Elephant. The author says that for Sipho, "drinking through his trunk" was a smooth and effortless process. But when describing the process, he mentions Sipho curling his trunk up to his lips and releasing the water into his mouth.
