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06/21/2002 entry: "Google Challenge, anybody?"

So yeah, I joined The Google Challenge. So if I have some weird entries in here, you'll have to understand, I'm doing all for that.

You all know that joke, right? About the elephant? Painting it's toenails?

Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

I don't know, why?

So they can hide in cherry trees.

I've never seen an elephant in a cherry tree before.

Works well, doesn't it?

Har har. Anyhow, thinking about that joke also made me wonder what elephant's toes really looked like. I mean.. are there really toes? I know when you drew them as a kid, you drew the toenails, and the big circular elephant feet. But... do elephant toes look like our toes? Or like.. similar? Well, being an internet junkie, I decided to look for myself online.

Along the way, I found this cute string of jokes:

Q: How do you get an elephant to the top of an oak tree?
A: Plant an acorn under him and wait 50 years.

Q: What if I don't want to wait 50 years?
A: Put a parachute on the elephant and drop him from an elecopter.

Q: How do you get an elephant down from an oak tree?
A: Tell him to sit on a leaf and wait until autumn.

Q: Why are alligators long and flat?
A: They must have gotten too close to the oak tree.

So, on to discovering more about the elephant's anatomy. As with all animals, there are some strange facts you're bound to discover. We know some stuff about elephant's tusks. But on this webpage I found, it says "One of the elephant's tusks is often used more than the other (i.e. the parallel in humans is right handed and left handed people)". Now that's kind of weird. You know they have to look goofy when they're doing that.

Elephant's noses... not too much of a mystery. We've all seen Dumbo. But, check this out...

I now know how to tell the difference between an African elephant and an Asian elephant. The African elephant's trunk has two "fingers" while the Asian has one. Interesting. Apparently, it's also their most sensitive organ, and when they're in captivity, that's where people beat them. Fun. Those people deserve to be trampled on and squished between the elephant's toes. Speaking of, I'll do that next.

Here we learn the truth!

"The only evidence of an elephant's five toes buried within the flesh of the foot are the toe nails. Actually, the toe nails are cornified shields in the skin and are not attached to the fingers/digits. Interestingly, not all of the toes have nails either."

So they do have toes, but inside of their foot. That makes more sense.

More fun facts about elephants (I'm gonna learn you good!):

- The elephant´s foot is formed in such a way that it is essentially walking on tiptoe, with a tough and fatty part of connective tissue for the sole

- This spongy "shock absorber" helps an elephant to move silently

- Each elephant's ear is unique and is used as a a type of fingerprint for identification

- Ears are used to regulate body temperature

- The natural skin colour is greyish black, but the apparent colour is determined by the soil of the land (this is caused by the elephant throwing mud over its back.

- The elephant is among the more intelligent animals

- The brain of the elephant is larger than any other land mammal and it is located in the back of the skull well away from the forehead

- The African elephant´s ears act as a heat radiator. Similar to a human sweating and a dog panting the elephant´s ears have large arteries and veins near the skin on the back of the ear that pump blood through a filter of networked capillaries as the ears fan.

See? You learn a lot when you sign up for The Google Challenge. Well, you can. If you do it my way. I prefer my way. Because at least I feel like I'm doing something instead of just sitting around waiting to get a job.

But, tomorrow I'm going with one of my friends to a temp agency, so THEY can find us jobs. Yep. So things should be all good soon. Hopefully. I need to find my White Stripes tickets...