ELEPHANT AND THE JACK FRUIT

Both are very familiar and have some oddities The elephant is the only animal with the scrotum inside its body. If the genital organ is not excited, you cannot say whether the African elephant is male or female! The Asian male can be distinguished by its tusks; the African female too has tusks. The trunk is extremely unique. It can store a huge quantity of data about the smell of other animals etc. When you approach it, it stretches its trunk to smell you. It never forgets the smell. For the animal, t is your finger print. The trunk is used dexterously, as we do our hands, and can carry gallons of water, for pouring over its body, into its mouth. My father has told us about an elephant, that can write alphabet in Malayalam These are only some oddities. As children, we used to wonder how elephants mate, as the penis elongates downwards, reaching almost to the ground. When the cow elephant is standing, how can it be inserted? When sexually excited, the penis bends upwards like a U- tube and forces itself into the female organ. Normally vulva is near the tail; in the case of the elephant, it is between the legs Now, of course, all can see it in TV channels. JACK FRUIT The jack fruit is also very, very strange! First of all, it is a collection of a large quantity of individual fruits. Each fruit has a big seed covered with yellow petals which we fry or cook as a delicious dish, simply by boiling in water! In the season, in Namboodiri homes you get it every day (not now). When ripe, it is very sweet. The seed too is cooked. I like it very much, if boiled for a long time, until it becomes a pulp and then liberally sprinkled with coconut oil and allowed to remain over the stove for a long time. Bing deficient in starch, this dish is ggod for diabetic patients! All the individual fruits, in what we call the jack fruit, is well covered with a thick, prickly skin, given to cows as food. A jack fruit can weigh up to twenty kilograms. Another notable thing is that, unlike in other trees, jack fruit forms in the trunk! There is a saying in Malayalam, ‘if it wants, the fruit may come even from its root’. In tender, flowery stage, the whole thing can be cooked, and eaten as ‘thoran’.(a dry dish) A question comes to my mind: when the flowers are well covered by the skin, how are they pollinated?