Why don't elephants have balls?

When you say balls, I’m assuming you mean testicles, of course ;)

Of course, being male, MALE elephants have to have testicles, as that’s the case for nearly every male mammal (I said nearly). What elephants don’t have is a scrotum. Weird, huh? I did some searching, and found a diagram that shows what I mean.

So they DO have balls. They just don’t have external balls. It’s like a whale, except apparently elephants never showed any sign in evolutionary past that they ever had a scrotum; when whales possibly did. Whales’ testicles are on the inside of their bodies to keep them at the perfect temperature. If most other mammals (including humans) had their balls on the inside, sperm would get cooked. That’s why most have an actual scrotum. But as for whales, in the water they would likely get too cold for sperm production. So it seems elephants adopted a similar trait.

Either way, it sure is a deviation from most male mammals, as most have their actual balls on the “outside”. Pretty much the only way to tell if an elephant’s a male up close is seeing if they have a penis (mostly if they’re young) or the size of their tusks relative to the female elephants.

Not sure why it is that way, and so are many people. It seems it could be an adaptation, but I guess with time, we’ll find out.

Replied thru Quora by

Matthew Prower