Why does Dumbo need big ears?
By Lois Craig, our Science correspondent
If Dumbo were real, he would not just use his ears to fly. He would need them to stop him overheating.
Two US scientists became interested in Dumbo. They were trying to learn how elephants cool themselves. They cool themselves by pumping blood through their ears.
Dumbo's large ears would have stopped him suffering severe heat stress, but his cooling system would be so efficient that he would have died of hypothermia if he rested too long.
Polly Philips and James Heath did the unusual study. They used drawings by Walt Disney. They worked out the area of Dumbo's ears. They also calculated how much heat he would produce.
HEAT STRESS
They estimated that during flight, his metabolic rate would have been 10 times that of his resting rate.
If Dumbo's ears were any smaller he would have suffered from crippling heat stress while flying.
The study also has a serious side in that it provides insight into animal physiology.
A real elephant with Dumbo sized ears would be doomed, as it would need to have an enormous metabolic rate, and a huge food intake, to compensate for the loss of heat from its ears.
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