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He thus had every reason to believe that, like other animals elephants can jump. Rav Meshullam ben Nathan, who was born in Provence in 1120 and passed away in Melun in 1180, never saw either a live elephant or an accurate drawing of one. Of particular relevance to us is that they are sometimes drawn with the hindlimb structure of lions or dogs, poised with elastic energy.

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Illustrations from that era show that artists, basing themselves on stories,were very unsure about how to depict elephants.They were often portrayed as possessing a body like those of horses or deer, sometimes even with split hooves. But the average person in those times never saw an elephant. The Vatican was given an elephant in 1514. Alfonso V of Portugal gave an elephant to Renew d'Anjou in 1477.

King Henry III of England received an elephant from Israel in 1254.

There were no zoos in medieval Europe, and very few elephants.The emperor Charlemagne, king of the Franks,received an elephant as a gift in 797.Frederick II used an elephant in his capture of Cremona in 1214. The answer is that he had no reason to believe otherwise. Natan Slifkin's answer, from his recently published Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom: Why then did Rav Meshulam suggest this explanation, one which is not biologically possible? Here is Rabbi Dr. Elephants cannot jump, and they cannot technically even run, since that requires all four legs to be off the ground at once. 'If you were to look at an elephantвЂ™s skeleton, youвЂ™ll see that theyвЂ™re standing on their tippy toes.All the bones are pointed straight down.вЂќ This means that they cannot jump, even if they wanted to. Here is Tony Barthel, curator of Elephant Trails at the National Zoo in Washington DC. There is one small problem with Rav Meshulam's explanation: elephants can't jump. Rav Meshulam therefore explained that the Talmud offered the explanation of vines because elephants eat them.and we lift up the vines in front of the elephant, which will jump up to eat them, thereby lifting itself off of the ground. In light of these objections, Rav Meshulam offers his own explanation of what the Talmud meant when it suggested using vines. Second, the grape vines, being grape vines, are legally considered to be part of the ground itself, so the elephant standing on them would not be separate from the ground, which is precisely what is needed to effect a legal transfer of ownership. First, if the Talmud had meant to suggest that a platform three tefachim in height be built, it would have said so, and not concocted some contraption using grape vines. Tosafot, a collection of medieval commentaries on the Talmud, is dissatisfied with Rashi for a number of reasons.