For elephants, its not just their ears and trunk that make them uniq...( further information about the conferen...)

In his presentation Dr. West will highlight the following:

The anatomy of the elephant: Dr. West has attended three elephant autopsies and confirms that the animal's two pleural layers are firmly adherent although it is possible to separate them with some difficulty by pushing a finger or blunt instrument through the soft connective tissue joining the two layers. No satisfactory explanation has been advanced for the peculiar anatomy of the elephant pleural space.

Snorkeling behavior in the elephant: Snorkeling at any substantial depth creates very large pressures around the animal's lung. In spite of these very large pressures around the lungs, alveolar pressure is essentially atmospheric, because the lung is connected to the atmosphere by the open proboscis, or trunk. The result is that the systemic vascular pressures are very high, whereas the pressure inside the thoracic cavity remains low. This inequality of pressures has dramatic effects at the interface between the lung and the rest of the body that is in the pleura. Other mammals such as humans cannot survive anything like this degree of ''negative pressure breathing'' (one reason why it is impossible to buy a snorkel longer than about 30 centimeters).

Vulnerability of the pleura during snorkeling: During snorkeling, all of the elephant's body tissues including the head, neck, chest wall, abdomen and limbs are exposed to a high pressure because of immersion in the water. The only exception is the lung, because it is connected to the air by a tube. Consequently, a region just outside the lung has a large pressure differential. This is the reason why the pleura is so vulnerable. The structure apparently at greatest risk is the parietal pleura, which lines the thoracic cag
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Contact: Donna Krupa
djkrupa1@aol.com
703-967-2751
American Physiological Society
26-Aug-2002