Recently, we posted an image (this article’s title image) to Instagram of one of the iconic cow elephants that we monitor. Many of you reading this will know of Dida.
Dida is an awesome creature. She’s a mother and a source of wisdom; a matriarch that has shepherded her herd through many hardships. She’s a spectacle. Her ground-grazing tusks have excited tourists for the best part of five decades. She’s also a bastion against the Tsavo elephant population’s losing genes such as hers from their pool.
She’s also now a (minor) viral sensation. Our post, which garnered some 12,000 likes on Instagram, was a picture of her staring straight at the photographer. It’s difficult not to look at the photograph and see the intelligence inhabiting behind Dida’s eyes.
We noted it, in fact, in our caption of the image. The post garnered significant attention. Many of the over 100 comments spoke of the obviousness of that intelligence, of Dida’s wisdom, as well as her majesty.
So, with this week’s article, we wanted to put a spotlight on the notion of an elephant’s intelligence. We, therefore, thought it would be exciting to bring you three accounts, monitored in three very different contexts, that will give insight into an elephant’s intelligence.
Viral video of a zoo elephant returning a shoe dropped into its enclosure
This week, social media was again excited by an account of the intelligence of elephant. The world is currently very excited about the video of an elephant in a Chinese zoo returning a shoe to a small girl.
We seriously recommend you watching the video. In it, you can see as the animal uses it’s trunk to hand the lost item back up to it’s owner.
It’s an incredible video, an almost humanising video. Unlike the other two accounts indicating as to an elephant’s intelligence that will be included in this article, this one isn’t taken from within a research setting. Neither does it seem to be an action indicative of behaviour that boosts the elephant’s fortunes.
That’s part of why this video is so incredible. It shouldn’t stop us from trying but it is obviously quite impossible for us to try and access the motivations of this elephant. Whatever did motivate this elephant to act in seeming kindness and in apparent recognition of another individual’s loss, is quite clearly indicative of advanced emotional capacity.
Elephants can differentiate between human languages (and are able to gauge threat-levels resultingly)
This behaviour was monitored by a researcher from the University of Sussex. Graeme Shannon is a psychologist who, when out in Kenya, claims to have noted an obvious change to the signs of an elephant’s mental state as people around the elephant changed between languages.
Shannon observed that as one of his companions shifted between Kiswahili (one of Kenya’s national languages) and Maa (the language of the Maasai), an elephant nearby flitted between relaxed and agitated states.
With this observation on behaviour, scientists have suggested that it evidences an ability to differentiate between human sounds for the purpose of increasing the elephant individual’s security.
Kiswahili is spoken across Kenya but infrequently by the Maasai tribe members that live around elephant. It, and English, are, however, spoken by travellers who come to the places such as the Maasai Mara for holiday.
Shannon witnessed that the elephant was visibly more distressed when Maa was spoken than when Kiswahili was. The reason why, it was posited, is that the elephant recognises which of the languages’ being spoken is representative of greater threat.
Though the Maasai don’t hunt elephant in Kenya, they have long lived amongst elephant and conflict was historically not uncommon. Shannon suggested that the elephant’s distress was the result of it recognising Maa and associating it with violence.
Elephants can distinguish between their own bodies and their surrounding environment
In what certain behavioural science aficionados will recognise as the reworking of a self-awareness test done to children, elephant in Thailand were tested on their ability to recognise their physical self with a matt and stick test.
Twelve Asian elephant were given a test whereby they were made to give a stick to their trainers. However, for some of the elephant’s participating the stick was also attached to a matt that the elephants, at the start of the experiment, were standing atop of.
Elephants, researcher Joshua Plotnik of New York University’s Hunter College and founder of Think Elephant’s International found, were very quickly able to recognise that their own mass was hindering completion of the task.