THERE are fears for a baby elephant spotted walking in the wild without a trunk.

The calf was filmed among a herd of adults in South Africa's Kruger National Park missing its vital appendage.

Concerned safari staff don't know how it lose the trunk, but it likely to have been mauled by a predator.

It may have been torn off by a crocodiles as it drank water from a lake, or by a lion.

There are also concerns it may have been caught in a hunter's snare.

Elephants use their trunks for breathing, smelling, touching, grasping, and producing sound.

A grown elephant trunk can lift up to 770lbs and contain 40,000 muscles.

Elephant trunks are stunted at birth, then rapidly elongate over the course of a few days.

The babies aren't used to the new body part and often tread on and trip over it.

Trunks are fused to an elephant's upper lip and nose.

The animals use them to pick food from trees and low on the ground, and drink two gallons of water at a time with it.

An adult needs to eat between 200-600 pounds of food a day and drink up to 50 gallons of water a day.

Losing its trunk vastly reduces an elephants chances of surviving in the wild.