Elephant intelligence - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

s are amongst the world's most intelligent species. With a mass of just over 5 kg (11 lb), elephant brains are larger than those of any other land animal, and although the largest whale

Whale

Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...

s have body masses twenty-fold those of a typical elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. The elephant's brain is similar to that of humans in terms of structure and complexity - such as the elephant's cortex

Cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...

having as many neurons as a human brain, suggesting convergent evolution

Convergent evolution

Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are...

.

Elephants exhibit a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief

Grief

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...

, learning, allomothering

Allomothering

Allomothering, or non-maternal infant care, can be performed by males such as a child’s father, non-reproductive males in polyandrous systems, or older siblings interested in abetting their own genetic material via their siblings ....

, mimicry, art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, play, a sense of humor, altruism

Altruism

Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...

, use of tools, compassion

Compassion

Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.There is an aspect of...

, cooperation

Cooperation

Cooperation or co-operation is the process of working or acting together. In its simplest form it involves things working in harmony, side by side, while in its more complicated forms, it can involve something as complex as the inner workings of a human being or even the social patterns of a...

, self-awareness

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...

, memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

and possibly language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

. All indicate that Elephants are highly intelligent; it is thought they are equal with cetaceans and primate

Primate

A primate is a mammal of the order Primates , which contains prosimians and simians. Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests; many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment...

s in this regard. Due to the high intelligence and strong family ties of elephants, some researchers argue it is morally wrong for humans to cull them.

Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

once said that elephants were "The beast which passeth all others in wit and mind."

Cerebral cortex

The elephant (both Asian and African) has a very large and highly convoluted neocortex

Neocortex

The neocortex , also called the neopallium and isocortex , is a part of the brain of mammals. It is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres, and made up of six layers, labelled I to VI...

, a trait also shared by humans, apes and certain dolphin

Dolphin

Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...

species. Scientists see this as a sign of complex intelligence

Intelligence

Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....

.

Asian elephant

Asian Elephant

The Asian or Asiatic elephant is the only living species of the genus Elephas and distributed in Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east. Three subspecies are recognized — Elephas maximus maximus from Sri Lanka, the Indian elephant or E. m. indicus from mainland Asia, and E. m....

s have the greatest volume of cerebral cortex

Cerebral cortex

available for cognitive processing of all existing land animals. Elephants have a volume of cerebral cortex

Cerebral cortex

available for cognitive processing that exceeds that of any primate

Primate

species, and extensive studies place elephants in the category of great apes

Great Apes

Great Apes may refer to*Great apes, species in the biological family Hominidae, including humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans*Great Apes , a 1997 novel by Will Self...

in terms of cognitive abilities for tool use and tool making.

The elephant brain exhibits a gyral

Gyrus

A gyrus is a ridge on the cerebral cortex. It is generally surrounded by one or more sulci .-Notable gyri:* Superior frontal gyrus, lat. gyrus frontalis superior* Middle frontal gyrus, lat. gyrus frontalis medius...

pattern more complex and with more numerous convolutes, or brain folds, than that of humans, primates or carnivores, but less complex than cetaceans. However, the cortex of the elephant brain is believed to have as many cortical neurons (nerve cells) and cortical synapse

Synapse

In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...

s as that of humans, which exceeds that of cetaceans. Elephants are believed to rank equal with dolphins in terms of problem-solving abilities, and many scientists tend to rank elephant intelligence

Intelligence

at the same level as cetaceans; in fact, a 2011 article published by ABC Science states that, "elephants [are as] smart as chimps, [and] dolphins".

Other features of the brain

Elephants also have a very large and highly convoluted hippocampus

Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in...

, a brain structure in the limbic system

Limbic system

The limbic system is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, septum, limbic cortex and fornix, which seemingly support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction. The term "limbic" comes from the Latin...

that is much bigger than that of any human, primate

Primate

or cetacean. The hippocampus of an elephant takes up about 0.7% of the central structures of the brain, comparable to 0.5% for humans and with 0.1% in Risso's dolphin

Risso's Dolphin

Risso's dolphin is the only species of dolphin in the genus Grampus.-Taxonomy:Risso's dolphin is named after Antoine Risso, whose description formed the basis of the first public description of the animal, by Georges Cuvier, in 1812...

s and 0.05% in bottlenose dolphins.

The hippocampus

Hippocampus

is linked to emotion

Emotion

Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

through the processing of certain types of memory

Memory

, especially spacial. This is thought to be possibly why elephants suffer from psychological flashbacks and the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Posttraumaticstress disorder is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,...

(PTSD).

The encephalization quotient

Encephalization quotient

Encephalization Quotient , or encephalization level is a measure of relative brain size defined as the ratio between actual brain mass and predicted brain mass for an animal of a given size, which is hypothesized to be a rough estimate of the intelligence of the animal.This is a more refined...

(EQ) of elephants ranges from 1.13 to 2.36. The average EQ is 2.14 for Asian elephants, and 1.67 for African, with the overall average being 1.88. There is considerable debate about whether the EQ, or size of the brain relative to body size, is an accurate gauge for intelligence, especially since the animal with the highest EQ is a treeshrew

Treeshrew

The treeshrews are small mammals native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. They make up the families Tupaiidae, the treeshrews, and Ptilocercidae, the pen-tailed treeshrews, and the entire order Scandentia. There are 20 species in 5 genera...

Brain size at birth relative to adult brain size

Like humans, elephants must learn behavior as they grow up. They are not born with the instincts of how to survive. Elephants have a very long period in their lives for learning

Learning

Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...

, lasting for around ten years. One comparative way to try to gauge intelligence

Intelligence

is to compare brain size at birth to the fully developed adult brain. This indicates how much learning a species accumulates while young. The majority of mammals are born with a brain close to 90% of the adult weight, while Humans are born with 28%, bottlenose dolphins with 42.5%, chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

s with 54%, and elephants with 35%. This indicates that elephants have the highest amount of learning to undergo next to humans, and behavior is not mere instinct but must be taught throughout life. It should be noted that instinct

Instinct

Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...

is quite different from learned intelligence

Intelligence

. Parents will teach their young how to feed, use tools and learn their place in the highly complex elephant society. The cerebrum temporal lobes, which function as storage of memory

Memory

, are much larger than those of a human

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

Spindle neurons

Spindle cells

Spindle neuron

Spindle neurons, also called von Economo neurons , are a specific class of neurons that are characterized by a large spindle-shaped soma, gradually tapering into a single apical axon in one direction, with only a single dendrite facing opposite. Whereas other types of neurons tend to have many...

appear to play a central role in the development of intelligent behavior. As well as in humans and the great apes, spindle neurons are also found in the brains of both Asian and African elephants, as well as humpback whale

Humpback Whale

The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...

s, fin whale

Fin Whale

The fin whale , also called the finback whale, razorback, or common rorqual, is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales. It is the second longest whale and the sixth largest living animal after the blue whale, bowhead whale, and right whales, growing to nearly 27 metres long...

s, killer whales, sperm whale

Sperm Whale

The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, is a marine mammal species, order Cetacea, a toothed whale having the largest brain of any animal. The name comes from the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in the animal's head. The sperm whale is the only living member of genus Physeter...

s, bottlenose dolphins, Risso's dolphin

Risso's Dolphin

s, and beluga whales. The remarkable similarity between the elephant brain and the human brain supports the thesis of convergent evolution

Convergent evolution

Elephant society

The elephant has one of the most closely knit societies of any living species. Elephant families can only be separated by death or capture.
Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss is an American conservationist, wildlife researcher and writer, who specialises in elephant behaviour. She has published several books including Portraits in the Wild: Animal Behaviour in East Africa .-Life and work:Moss graduated at Smith College in Massachusetts in 1962, majoring in...

, an ethologist

Ethology

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....

specialising in elephants, recalls an event involving a family of African elephants. Two members of the family were shot by poachers, who were subsequently chased off by the remaining elephants. Although one of the elephants died, the other, named Tina, remained standing, but with knees beginning to give way. Two family members, Trista and Teresia (Tina's mother), walked to both sides of Tina and leaned in to hold her up. Eventually, Tina grew so weak, she fell to the ground and died. However, Trista and Teresia did not give up but continually tried to lift her. They managed to get Tina into a sitting position, but her body was lifeless and fell to the ground again. As the other elephant family members became more intensely involved in the aid, they tried to put grass into Tina's mouth. Teresia then put her tusks beneath Tina's head and front quarters and proceeded to lift her. As she did so, her right tusk broke completely off, right up to the lip and nerve cavity. The elephants gave up trying to lift Tina but did not leave her; instead, they began to bury her in a shallow grave and throw leaves over her body. They stood over Tina for the night and then began to leave in the morning. The last to leave was Teresia.

Because elephants are so closely knit and highly matriarchal, a family can be devastated by the death of another (especially a matriarch), and some groups never recover their organization. Cynthia Moss has observed a mother, after the death of her calf, walk sluggishly at the back of a family for many days.

Edward Topsell

Edward Topsell

Edward Topsell was an English cleric and author best remembered for his bestiary.Topsell attended Christ's College, Cambridge, earned his B.A. and probably an M.A. as well, before beginning a career in the Church of England. He served as the first rector of East Hoathly, and subsequently became...

stated in his publication The History of Four-Footed Beasts in 1658, "There is no creature among all the Beasts of the world which hath so great and ample demonstration of the power and wisdom of almighty God as the elephant." Of note, he stated in the same publication that elephants worship the sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

and the moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

and become pregnant by chewing on mandrake

Mandrake

Mandrake may refer to:* Mandrake , a plant of the genus Mandragora* Mandragora , in occultism* Mandrake Linux, former name of Mandriva Linux, a computer operating system...

, neither of which is true. Elephants are believed to be on par with chimpanzees with regards to their cooperative skills.

Elephant altruism

Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress. In India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout

Mahout

A mahout is a person who drives an elephant. The word mahout comes from the Hindi words mahaut and mahavat. Usually, a mahout starts as a boy in the 'family business' when he is assigned an elephant early in its life and they would be attached to each other throughout the elephant's life.The most...

(elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to investigate the hold-up and noticed a dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.

Cynthia Moss has often seen elephants going out of their way to avoid hurting or killing a human, even when it was difficult for them (such as having to walk backwards to avoid a person).

Joyce Poole documented an encounter told to her by Colin Francombe on Kuki Gallman's Laikipia Ranch. A ranch herder was out on his own with camels when he came across a family of elephants. The matriarch charged at him and knocked him over with her trunk, breaking one of his legs. In the evening, when he did not return, a search party was sent in a truck to find him. When the party discovered him, he was being guarded by an elephant. The animal charged the truck, so they shot over her and scared her away. The herdsman later told them that when he could not stand up, the elephant used her trunk to lift him under the shade of a tree. She guarded him for the day and would gently touch him with her trunk.

Self-medication

Elephants in Africa will self-medicate by chewing on the leaves of a tree from the Boraginaceae

Boraginaceae

Boraginaceae, the Borage or Forget-me-not family, include a variety of shrubs, trees, and herbs, totaling about 2,000 species in 146 genera found worldwide.A number of familiar plants belong to this family....

family, which induces labor

Childbirth

Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...

. Kenyans also use this tree for the same purpose.

Death ritual

Elephants are the only species on Earth other than Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals known to have or have had any recognizable ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind (even unrelated elephants that have died long ago). They are often seen gently investigating the bones with their trunks and feet and remaining very quiet. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves. When an elephant is hurt, other elephants (even if they are unrelated) will aid them.

Elephant researcher Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith is a historian, journalist, and biographer who has written several books on Africa and its modern history.Meredith first worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa for the Observer and Sunday Times, then as a research fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford...

recalls an occurrence in his book about a typical elephant death ritual that was witnessed by Anthony Hall-Martin, a South African biologist who had studied elephants in Addo

Addo

-People:*Eric Addo , Ghanaian footballer*Joe Addo , Ghanaian footballer*Otto Addo , Ghanaian footballer*Ransford Addo , Ghanaian footballer*Simon Addo , Ghanaian footballer...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, for over eight years. The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf, were all gently touching her body with their trunks, trying to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream, but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next two days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.

Occurrences of elephants behaving this way around human beings are common throughout Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. On many occasions, they have buried dead or sleeping humans or aided them when they were hurt.
Meredith also recalls an event told to him by George Adamson

George Adamson

George Adamson , also known as the "Baba ya Simba" , was a British wildlife conservationist and author...

, a Kenyan Game Warden, regarding an old Turkana

Turkana

Turkana may refer to:* Turkana people of Kenya and Ethiopia* Turkana language of Kenya and Ethiopia* Lake Turkana in Kenya* Lake Turkana National Parks* Turkana District in Kenya* the fictional world of Turkana IV in a Star Trek Next Generation episode...

woman who fell asleep under a tree after losing her way home. When she woke up, there was an elephant standing over her, gently touching her. She kept very still, because she was very frightened. As other elephants arrived, they began to scream loudly and buried her under branches. She was found the next morning by the local herdsmen, unharmed.

George Adamson also recalls when he shot a bull elephant from a herd that kept breaking into the government gardens of Northern Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

. George gave the elephant's meat to local Turkana tribesmen and then dragged the rest of the carcass half a mile away. That night, the other elephants found the body and took the shoulder blade and leg bone and returned the bones to the exact spot the elephant was killed. Scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

s often debate the extent that elephants feel emotion

Emotion

Play

Joyce Poole on many occasions has observed wild African elephants at play. They apparently do things for their own and others' entertainment. Elephants have been seen sucking up water, holding their trunk high in the air, and then spraying the water like a fountain.

Mimicry

Recent studies have shown that elephants can also mimic

Mimic

In evolutionary biology, mimicry is the similarity of one species to another which protects one or both. This similarity can be in appearance, behaviour, sound, scent and even location, with the mimics found in similar places to their models....

sounds they hear. The discovery was found when Mlaika, an orphaned elephant, would copy the sound of trucks passing by. So far, the only other animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...

s that are thought to mimic

Mimic

sounds are whales, dolphins, bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

s, primates, clouded leopard

Clouded Leopard

The clouded leopard is a felid found from the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China, and has been classified as vulnerable in 2008 by IUCN...

s, and birds.
Calimero, an African elephant who was 23 years old, also exhibited a unique form of mimicry. He was in a Swiss zoo with some Asian elephant

Asian Elephant

s. Asian elephant

Asian Elephant

s use chirps that are different from African elephants' deep rumbling noises. Calimero also began to chirp and not make the deep calls that his species normally would.

Kosik

Kosik

Kosik is a male Asian elephant in the Everland theme park in Yongin, South Korea, born 1990. He made headlines in September 2006 when it was discovered he could imitate the Korean words for "yes" , "no" , "sit" , "lie down" , and four other words...

, an Indian elephant

Indian Elephant

The Indian Elephant is one of three recognized subspecies of the Asian elephant, and native to mainland Asia. Since 1986, Elephas maximus has been listed as endangered by IUCN as the population has declined by at least 50% over the last three generations, estimated to be 60–75 years...

at Everland

Everland

-External links:*...

Amusement Park, South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

, surprised trainers when they thought there was a person in his enclosure that was actually Kosik imitating Jong Gap Kim, his trainer. Kosik can make sounds imitating up to eight Korean words, including sit, no, yes and lie down. His mimicry is remarkably human-sounding. Kosik produces human-like sounds by putting his trunk in his mouth and then shaking it while breathing out, similar to how people whistle with their fingers.

Elephants use contact calls to stay in touch with one another when they are out of one another's sight. Female elephants are able to remember and distinguish the contact calls of female family and bond group members from those of females outside of their extended family network. They can also distinguish between the calls of family units depending upon how frequently they came across them.

Tool use

Elephants show a remarkable ability to use tools, using their trunks like arms. Elephants have been observed digging holes to drink water and then ripping bark from a tree, chewing it into the shape of a ball, filling in the hole and covering over it with sand to avoid evaporation

Evaporation

Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....

, then later going back to the spot for a drink. They also often use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves. Elephants have also been known to drop very large rocks onto an electric fence either to ruin the fence or to cut off the electricity.

Art

Like several other species, elephants are able to produce abstract art using their trunks to hold brushes. An example of this was shown in the TV program Extraordinary Animals, in which elephants at a camp in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

were able to draw self-portraits with flowers. Although the images were drawn by the elephants, there was always a person assisting and guiding the movement. From those presentations, it cannot be definitely evaluated whether the elephants are conscious about the shape of their drawings or not.

This extraordinary video documentation of an elephant painting a picture of an elephant—possibly indicating self-awareness—has become widespread on internet news and video websites. The quality of the painting is extremely high, leading many astonished viewers to doubt the video's authenticity. The website snopes.com, which specializes in debunking urban legends, lists the video as "true", in that the elephant produced the brush strokes, but notes that the similarity of the produced paintings is indicative of a learned sequence of strokes rather than a creative effort on the part of the elephant.

Problem-solving ability

Elephants are able to spend substantial time working on problems. They are able to change their behavior radically to face new challenges, a hallmark of complex intelligence

Intelligence

. A 2010 experiment revealed that in order to reach food, "elephants can learn to coordinate with a partner in a task requiring two individuals to simultaneously pull two ends of the same rope to obtain a reward", putting them on an equal footing with chimpanzees in terms of their level of cooperative skills.

In the 1970s, at Marine World Africa, USA, there lived an Asian elephant named Bandula.
Bandula worked out how to break open or unlock several of the pieces of equipment used to keep the shackles on her feet secure. The most complex device was a brommel hook, a device that closes when two opposite points are slid together. Bandula used to fiddle with the hook until it slid apart when it was aligned. Once she had freed herself, she would help the other elephants escape.
In Bandula's case and certainly with other captive elephants, there was an element of deception

Deception

Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...

involved during the escapes, such as the animals looking around making sure no one was watching.

In another case, a female elephant worked out how she could unscrew iron rods with an eye hole that were an inch thick. She used her trunk to create leverage and then untwist the bolt.

Ruby

Ruby (elephant)

Ruby was a 4.5 ton Asian elephant that lived at the Phoenix Zoo and was famous for creating paintings. The most expensive of her paintings sold for $25,000.-Early life:...

, an Asian elephant

Asian Elephant

at Phoenix Zoo

Phoenix Zoo

The Phoenix Zoo opened in 1962 and is the largest non-profit zoo in the United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the zoo was founded by Robert Maytag, a member of the Maytag family, and operates on of land in the Papago Park area of Phoenix. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of...

would often eavesdrop on conversations keepers would have talking about her. When she heard the word paint, she became very excitable. The colours she favoured were green, yellow, blue and red. On one particular day, there was a fire truck that came and parked outside her enclosure where a man had just had a heart attack. The lights on the truck were flashing red, white and yellow. When Ruby painted later on in the day, she chose those colours. She also showed a preference for particular colours that the keepers wore.

Harry Peachey, an elephant trainer, developed a cooperative relationship with an elephant named Koko. Koko would help out the keepers, "prompting" the keepers to encourage him with various commands and words that Koko would learn. Peachey stated that elephants are almost predisposed to cooperate and work with humans as long as they are treated with respect and sensitivity. Koko worked out when his keepers needed a bit of "elephant help" when they were transferring the females of the group to another zoo. When the keepers wanted to transfer a female, they would usually say her name, followed by the word transfer (e.g., "Connie transfer"). Koko soon figured out what this meant. If the keepers asked an elephant to transfer and they did not budge, they would say, "Koko, give me a hand." When he heard this, Koko would help. Peachey firmly believes that after 27 years of working with elephants, they can understand the semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

and syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

of some of the words they hear. This is something thought to be very rare in the animal kingdom.

A study by Dr. Naoko Irie of Tokyo University has shown that elephants demonstrate skills at arithmetic. The experiment "consist[ed] of dropping varying numbers of apples into two buckets in front of the [Ueno Zoo] elephants and then recording how often they could correctly choose the bucket holding the most fruit." When more than one apple was being dropped into the bucket, this meant that the elephants had to "keep running totals in their heads to keep track of the count." The results showed that "Seventy-four percent of the time, the animals correctly picked the fullest bucket. An African elephant named Ashya scored the highest with an amazing eighty-seven percent … Humans in this same contest managed a success rate of just sixty-seven percent." The study was also filmed to ensure its accuracy.

Self-awareness

Asian Elephants have joined a small group of animals, including great apes

Great Apes

Great Apes may refer to*Great apes, species in the biological family Hominidae, including humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans*Great Apes , a 1997 novel by Will Self...

, bottlenose dolphins and magpie

Magpie

Magpies are passerine birds of the crow family, Corvidae.In Europe, "magpie" is often used by English speakers as a synonym for the European Magpie, as there are no other magpies in Europe outside Iberia...

s, that exhibit self-awareness

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...

. The study was conducted with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) using elephants at the Bronx Zoo

Bronx Zoo

The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows....

in New York. Although many animals will respond to a mirror, very few show any evidence that they recognize it is in fact themselves in the mirror reflection

Mirror test

The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness, as animals either possess or lack the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror.The test was developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970, based in part on observations made by Charles Darwin. While visiting a zoo, Darwin held a mirror up to an orangutan...

.

The Asian elephants in the study also displayed this type of behavior when standing in front of a 2.5 m-by-2.5 m mirror - they inspected the rear and brought food close to the mirror for consumption.

Evidence of elephant self awareness was shown when the elephant Happy repeatedly touched a painted X on her head with her trunk, a mark which could only be seen in the mirror. Happy ignored another mark made with colourless paint that was also on her forehead to ensure she was not merely reacting to a smell or feeling.

Frans De Waal, who ran the study, stated, "These parallels between humans and elephants suggest a convergent cognitive evolution possibly related to complex society and cooperation."

Joyce Poole, of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, Kenya, has demonstrated vocal learning and imitation in elephants of sounds made by each other and in the environment. She is beginning to research whether sounds made by elephants have dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s, a trait that is rare in the animal kingdom.

Self-awareness and culling

There has been considerable debate over the issue of culling

Culling

Culling is the process of removing animals from a group based on specific criteria. This is done either to reinforce certain desirable characteristics or to remove certain undesirable characteristics from the group...

African elephants in South Africa's Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers and extends from north to south and from east to west.To the west and south of the Kruger National Park are the two South African provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga. In the north is Zimbabwe, and to the east is...

as a means of controlling the population. Some scientists and environmentalists argue that it is "unnecessary and inhumane" to cull them since "elephants resemble humans in a number of ways, not least by having massive brains, social bonds that appear to be empathetic, long gestations, high intelligence, offspring that require an extended period of dependent care, and long life spans." A South African Animal Rights group asked in a statement anticipating the announcement, "How much like us do elephants have to be before killing them becomes murder?". Others argue that culling is necessary when biodiversity is threatened.

External links

The Truth Behind Elephant Brainpower by BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
Elephant Cognition in Primate Perspective by Richard W. Byrne and Lucy A. Bates
Do Elephants Show Empathy? by the Journal of Consciousness Studies
African Elephants have Expectations about the Locations of out-of-sight Family Members by the Amboseli Trust for Elephants

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Cerebral cortex

Other features of the brain

Brain size at birth relative to adult brain size

Spindle neurons

Elephant society

Elephant altruism

Self-medication

Death ritual

Play

Mimicry

Tool use

Art

Problem-solving ability

Self-awareness

Self-awareness and culling

See also

External links