1. Elephants swim almost totally submerged (as you can see from some great videos on YouTube if you search for “swimming elephants”) and worms just about sink so we’ll assume a density of around 1g/cm3for both creatures. We can estimate (see reference 2 below) the surface area for a 5 metric tonne (circa5 m3) adult male African elephant, to be ~300,000 cm2whereas the surface area for acirca15 cm long by 0.7 cm diameter 6 g (circa6 cm3) earthworm is approximately 30 cm2. Hence surface areaperunit volume for the elephant is 300,000/5,000,000percm = 0.06percm whereas that for the earthworm is 30/6 = 5percm so that the surface area to volume ratio of the earthworm is 5/0.06 which is approximately 80 times higher for the earthworm than for the elephant.
2. Andreozzi R. Caprio V. DiSomma I. Sanchirico R. J. Hazard. Mater. 2006 134 1 7
3. Andreozzi R. Canterino M. Caprio V. DiSomma I. Sanchirico R. J. Hazard. Mater. 2006 138 452 458