eli5: how do elephants syringe and spray water with their trunks?

Question

As the title says, why do they not accidentally drown themselves or something?

Edit: bonus questions – can and do they sneeze? Can they have a deviated septum?

In: 3

Answer 1

If you really wanted to, even you could put your face down in a pan or bucker of water, suck water up into your nose and into your mouth, filling both mouth and your nasal cavity. You would do this, with your nose suberged, by opening your jaw and expanding your cheeks like you are suckling or trying to drink through a coffee straw, but with lips shut tight.

You could do this while protecting ypur airway, using a sucking, not an inhaling action.

Then, using both exhalation and expelling water from the mouth using cheeks and tongue, ypu could forcefully blast all that water back out your nose.

Most mammals could.

Elephants are just WAY better at this. Their trunk is big, has tens of thousands of muscles which can expand and contract their proboscio-nasal tract, etc.