Elephant joke

An elephant joke is a joke cycle, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, with many people constructing large numbers of them according to a set formula. Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.

An example of an elephant joke is:

Q: Why did the elephant paint its toenails red?
A: So it could hide in a cherry tree.