251 Elephant Jokes

Plus 10 Bonus Jokes!

A Corny, Crazy, Clean, Silly, Guffaw, Snort, Moan, and Groan Inducing
Trunkful of Trumpeting Elephant Jokes for Kids of All Ages!

You’ll Laugh Your Trunks Off! Tons of Big Gray Fun for Both Young and Old!


When I was in third grade, uh - that was a very long time ago, I was looking through a display of paperback and comic books at a local drug store. I was looking at the Batman comic books, but there were no new ones for me. Then a paperback with a bright red cover and a comical gray elephant caught my eye. It stood out.

I looked inside and began laughing as I read some of the silly and corny elephant jokes in the book. I was hooked on elephant jokes. I knew I had to have the book. I asked my mom to buy it for me and she did.

I underlined in pencil the elephant jokes I liked. I memorized some of the jokes and told them to friends and classmates at school. As a result of that, other kids got the elephant jokes book too. I started an elephant jokes craze at my school and it was a ton of good, clean fun.

Times were different back then. They were not perfect, but I wish those times would return. A pandemic, inflation, world conflict, politics, social tensions. People seem to be more unhappy these days than ever before. We need silly elephant jokes!

Elephant jokes began in the early 1960s when the L. M Becker Company of Wisconsin began selling a collection of fifty trading cards named “Elephant Jokes.” They were like the baseball cards that people collected and traded for fun. Elephant Jokes caught on and spread across the country and by early 1963 they were being told in California. They became a popular fad and appeared in newspapers and magazines. People told and created more and more elephant jokes and spread. Elephant jokes became a fun part of our culture and were enjoyed by generations.

The humor of elephant jokes is based on their ingenuity of absurdity. They thumb their nose at our usual understanding and knowledge of elephants and make us laugh because of crazy assumptions about elephants that we are know are not true. Elephant jokes ignore and suspend common sense and logic, they make no sense and spur our imagination. We have to buy into them and go along with the fun. Elephant jokes turn the world upside down with their silliness and ignoring of reality and truth, if only for a moment.

The size, shape, color, trunks, trumpeting, and overall appearance of elephants provide great material for jokes. Elephants are beasts that are so unusual to us that they just seem to be naturally funny. Elephants are easy joke targets, so there are elephant jokes.

Absurdity, craziness, silliness, and fun are what elephant jokes are all about!

Q: How do you know if an elephant is standing behind you in
the grocery store’s check-out line?
A: By the smell of peanuts on his breath.

Q: What’s the difference between a bunch of purple grapes and a purple
elephant?
A: If you don’t know, then I’m sure not sending you to the grocery store
to get me a bunch of purple grapes!

Q: What do you do with a green elephant that you bought at the grocery store?
A: Let it ripen on your kitchen counter until it turns purple.

The paperback book of elephant jokes I found at the drugstore was titled 101 Elephant Jokes - A Trunkful of Laughs and it was by Robert Blake (not the actor). Blake is long gone, but I thank him for the happiness he brought to me when I was a kid with his book of elephant jokes. Now that I'm a seasoned adult, elephant jokes still make me laugh.

Blake’s book inspired me to create this book. May this book humbly and respectfully continue on with Robert Blake’s legacy of telling elephant jokes and bring some fun, happiness, and joy to others.