SCIENTISTS HAVE KNOWN about a bony growth on the side of elephants’ feet for years but they have only just now come to the conclusion that it is actually a sixth toe.

The digit acts not like an ordinary toe but more like a heel on a lady’s shoe, the researchers noted in their latest study for the journal ‘Science’, reports PhysOrg.com.

In the report’s abstract the authors also explained that the growth was dismissed for three centuries as mere cartilage curiosities.

Elephants, after leaving water and becoming more of a land animal, began to walk on ‘tip toe’ and thus changing some bones into digits.

Scientists say they overlooked the toe because the bone started out as cartilage but then grew into regular bone. They also said that the feet are so fat it is almost impossible to see how things actually work while they are living.

Professor John Hutchinson from the Royal Veterinary College in the UK told the BBC he discovered the toe using CT scans, histology, dissection and electron microscopy.

For more information, see the Science Journal>