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Typical car tires are inflated to 35 PSI or so. There is a surprisingly large "footprint" from a tire supporting a car.

I think the PSI in their test is fairly small. While I'm sure finding an elephant is difficult, a simply hydraulic press in the lab could deliver hundreds of PSI.

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I would be generous and assume this is a demo of something that is more relatable to normal people experiences, and they did actually test this with a hydraulic press in reality.

It's a press release aimed at making the news, not a scholarly article, and those can be pretty.. misleading.

how does the inflation of the tire affect the mass load on the sample? are you saying if they changed the PSI of the car's tires they'd get different results (ignoring uninteresting details like how the PSI changed the tire geometry slightly?)

The pressure to which the tire is inflated affects how much it spreads against the surface it sits on, changing the applied pressure.

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