Personal Thoughts on Elephant Intelligence & The Merits of Studying It

Our species’ relationship with The Other, in our own species and outside it, has always yielded this duplicity that draws & distances simultaneously but at its core casts an almost child-like intrigue about those deemed ‘not like us.’
I feel that now in the twenty-first century the role of The Other will edge away from our own internal differences of race, sexual orientation and religious belief towards those outside of our species – the issues of civil rights & justice are just beginning to manifest themselves in the lives of non-humans and while it may be hundreds of years before they reach a comparable public level, the fact we’re beginning to recognize them marks a significant crossroads for human/non-human relations.

But I want to stress that my hope is not to treat animals as human beings but understand them, treat them, and praise them with the same intensity we would our brothers or countrymen. Without getting too lofty or loopy, I believe the relationships we form & uphold with non-humans on our own planet may down the line prove invaluable should the human species ever encounter one we, ourselves deem superior to our own.

Asian and African elephants possess a remarkable balance of otherness and sentience that is completely unique among the higher mammals: their four-legged, tusked, five-tonned appearance is drastically different from our own and even the other primates, yet they share the capacity for tool use, emotion, art, culture, and possibly language while remaining a categorized prey animal.

They appear so different, and yet attract us as so familiar. Elephants share a myriad of biological and intellectual threads with our own species that it must become our imperative to preserve their uniqueness without marginalizing them for it. Aristotle wrote of the elephant as “the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind,” and as science, technology and our own grasp upon the Earth expands we must realize our duty and connection to our elephantine brethren.

For More Information on Elephant Intelligence Visit Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence

Elephants and Abstract Thought

Art is an area which we humans perceive to be exclusively our own and of our creation, and it has admittedly taken some time for the inklings of abstract thought to be observed in non-human animals. We’ve had to dovetail into it by exercising our ‘power’ over animals by conditioning them to perform tricks for our amusement, more akin to manipulation than accentuating an animals’ unique abilities.

Most animals can be conditioned into performing through the rudimentary action-reaction practice where an action is positively rewarded with food or affection; but within the last thirty years the flagship species for animal intelligence – apes, dolphins, and elephants – have had their performances further analyzed and most importantly freed from human pressure and has allowed humans the chance to witness abstract thinking in a non-human form.

There is a novelty behind watching an elephant paint on a canvas but when one focuses on the basic abilities being exhibited the conclusion is remarkably profound: Elephants possess the ability to see in color but because they are terrestrial herbivores, their eyes are placed on the sides of their head to panoramically scan for predators. The ability for a prey animal to replicate an image with more tact than a primate such as a chimpanzee - whose forward facing eyes warrant three-dimensional vision – is an astounding instance of apparent convergent evolution, most importantly the evolution of thought & feeling.

BBC Science Bank on Elephant Intelligence & Their Capacity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/302feature1.shtml

Elephant's Emotional Capacity & Funeral Ritual

Being an ‘animal person’ lends itself to easily anthropomorphize animals as relating their actions to human behavior – this practice is not helpful for either animal advocacy or scientific analysis because whatever connection or similarity an elephant, dog or pig may exhibit, they are exhibiting it through their own species’ filter, the simple fact of the matter being they are an animal through and through.

But denying the existence of human-like behaviors in animals is just as deleterious (if not more so) since drawing such a divisive line between us and them both denies our mammalian heritage and is an ethically unfair judgment based on pure speciesism. Humans are so accustomed to their own behaviors that witnessing similarities in non-humans sparks the initial “he thinks he’s people” line of homocentric thought. We often fail to realize that the large amounts of DNA shared between Homo sapiens and the other mammalian families account for so much of what makes us perceive to be unique ourselves.

Case in point: outside of humans, elephants are the only known animals to exhibit an intimate connection with their dead and carry out ritualized funerals for their deceased. Humans, like elephants, are highly social animals with intimate family ties and a similarly long lifespan sadly guarantees that one will have to experience grief through losing a loved one.

In the wild, elephants have a highly regimented and long-lasting grieving period once a member of the herd passes: after an initial period of disbelief where the herd attempts to rouse the dead or stand them up, they become crushingly silent and encircle the body, tenderly stroking it with their trunks. Younger elephants, particularly those closely related to the deceased such as offspring, have been documented as emitting plaintive weeping sounds and even adult elephants sometimes exhibit streaks of ‘tears’ running down from their eyes and sweat glands on their temples. The funeral party will conclude when the herd covers the body with dirt & tree branches and only then will they leave the site.

E-Magazine Covering Cognitive Ethology History in Animal Studies: http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3702

Elephant Altruism

“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.”
- Edward Topsell, English cleric and naturalist

Elephants are of the very few animals that can have altruism marked upon both their character & biological profiles. While its presence in elephant society for social structuring seems to ‘explain away’ their behavior, even those closely associated with them believe the animals possess a kindness towards other animals unlike any other in the kingdom – and that seems all the more admirable for human society.

There is an instance in India where work elephants were assisting villagers in transporting logs and one elephant resolutely disobeyed his mahout to lower a log into a hole: upon the mahout’s inspection, the elephant halted because a napping dog was curled up in the hole; there have also been multiple accounts of elephants looking after injured researchers and tourists in game preserves where the animals gather around the fallen and gently rub the tips of their trunks over them for comfort.

In the study of animal intelligence or cognitive ethology (again an indicator that human/non-human relations are on the mend), it seems that we should have known there was something special about elephants from the beginning.

Stanford University Overview of Animal Altruism & Its Biology: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Elephant Self-Awareness

You may recall that in October of last year (2006) an experiment conducted at the Bronx Zoo in New York found that elephants possess the capacity for self-recognition, meaning that an individual animal can identify, recognize and differentiate itself from its peers. This trait is considered to be a major gauge for non-human intelligence, seen elsewhere only in the apes and bottlenose dolphins.

When you look at the photos of Happy and her fellow Bronx pachyderms caressing a painted ‘X’ on her forehead the flatlined scientific assessment is conclusive – indeed, elephants recognize themselves, in the singular and plural relations of their herd. But anyone who has seen elephants before in their lives – especially so younger children who actually gyrate excitedly upon seeing the animals at a zoo – has already known this, subconsciously or otherwise.

These immense animals are hugely powerful, leathery gray skin just barely concealing their bulk: but when these living mountains move it is with a slow, steadied elegance rather than the clunky cacophony of a mechanical tank. Regardless if one can clearly see their mahogany eyes, you know that they are taking it all in. They’re watching their environment and those interacting with it in a worldly, Buddhist gaze; the elephants know what their bodies are capable of but such a mindless, brazen exhibition of that wrath would go against what they are, within their own herds and to us as observers. Only when it is necessary to protect their young or defend themselves will they break their Zen, and even after that offense they immediately resume their knowingness.

BBC News Article Detailing the Bronx Zoo's Mirror Experiment: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6100430.stm

Introduction to Elephant Intelligence

The purpose of this blog is to investigate the various facets of intelligence found in elephants to support my personal belief that studies conducted in this area are quite possibly among the most important in human/animal relations & conservancy. The intellectual capacity of elephants is fairly well recognized by scientists and the general public, but elephants offer just enough difference while yielding such similar, identifiable 'humanized' abilities - such as self-awareness, tool use, problem solving, mimicry/semantic comprehension and the capacity for emotion & reverence for death - that they offer more for understanding animal intelligence (and the benefits & insight accompanying it) than the apes, dolphins, or any other non-human animal.

I would like to acknowledge in advance the research of Cynthia Moss, Anthony Martin-Hall and Joyce Poole for their fascinating contributions to this subject and commend them for furthering the study & awareness of it as well. I have created this blog as a closet zoologist and lifelong 'fan' of the elephant species and hopefully the information & media I put on this blog will spur the same enthusiasm & concern for elephants as it has for myself.