Elephant cognition

The duskydolphin 03:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

File:Ele-brain.JPG

Human, dolphin and elephant brains up to scale. (1)-cerebrum (1a)-temporal lobe and (2)-cerebellum

Elephant Intelligence

Elephant intelligence is very pronounced. With a mass just over 5kg, elephant brains are larger than those of any land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twentyfold those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. A wide variety of behavior, including those associated with grief, making music, art, play, a sense of humour, altruism, use of tools, compassion, self-awareness and memory⁵ all point to a highly intelligent species that are on par with cetaceans and primates.

The largest areas in elephant brain are those responsible for hearing, smell and movement coordination, and a large portion of the brain is to do with trunk management and sensitivity.

Aristotle once said that elephants were “The beast which passeth all others in wit and mind”².

The Elephant’s Brain

The elephant (both Asian and African) shares something that is seen in very few animals-a brain that is highly convoluted, thought by scientists to be a sign of intelligence. Elephants have a very long period in their lives for learning. One comparative way to try to gauge intelligence is to judge brain size when born compared with the brain when it is fully developed (adulthood). This indicates how much learning a species will take on during its ‘childhood’. The majority of mammals are born with a brain close to 90% of the adult weight. Chimpanzees are born with 54% of the adult weight, humans with 28% of the adult weight and elephants with 35% of adult weight. The learning period for an elephant is around ten years. This indicates that elephant behavior is not mere instinct but must be taught throughout life. Parents will teach their young how to feed, use tools and learn their place in highly complex elephant society⁵. The cerebrum temporal lobes, which functions as storage of memory are much larger than that of a human⁵.

Elephant Society

The elephant has one of the most closely knit societies of any living species, rivaled by very few (including humans). Elephant families can only be separated by death or capture. They are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress⁵. In India, an elephant who was helping locals lift logs was following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes when the Mahout (elephant trainer) told him to. When the elephant reached a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. When his mahout came to investigate the hold up, he noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone⁶.

Elephants, like humans and a few other animal species (such as Orca), must learn behavior as they grow up. They are not born with the instincts of how to survive⁵. They have a very long period in their life for learning.

Self Medication

Elephants in Africa will self-medicate themselves by chewing on the leaves of a tree from the Boraginaceae family, which induces labour. Kenyan natives also use this tree for the same purpose⁴.

Death Ritual

The elephant is the only other species apart from humans that have a ritual around death that many scientists liken to a funeral. 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. They also bury their dead-a behavior generally reserved for their own kind and one other species-humans. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves². When an elephant is hurt, other elephants (also even if they are unrelated) will aid them⁵.

Martin Meredith recalls an occurance in her book about a typical elephant death ritual that was witnessed by Anthony Martin-Hall, a South African biologist who had studied elephants in Addo, South Africa for over 8 years. The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf were all gently touching her body with their trunks and tried to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed crying saltwater tears and made sounds that sounded like a scream but then the entire herd then 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 2 days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return³.

Occurances of elephants behaving this way around human beings are common through Africa. Why they seem to treat humans the same as their own kind is unknown. On many occasions, they have buried dead or sleeping humans or aided them when they were hurt⁵. Meredith also recalls an event told to her by George Adamson, a Kenyan Game Warden regarding an old Turkana woman who fell asleep under a tree after loosing 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, unharmed³.
Another similar encounter documented by Joyce Poole told to her by Colin Francombe on Kuki Gallman’s Laikipia Ranch speaks of a ranch herder who was out on his own with camels when he came across a family of elephants. The matriarch charged at him. She knocked him over with her trunk, breaking one of his legs. In the evening, when he didn’t return, a search party was sent to find him in a truck. When the party found him, he was being guarded by an elephant who then charged at the truck so they drove back to the village to get guns. When they returned, they held up the guns ready to shoot the elephant but the herdsman told them to stop so they shot over her head and scared her away. The herdsman later told them that when he couldn’t stand up, the elephant used her trunk to lift him under the shade of a tree. She guarded him for the next day and would gently touch him with her trunk⁵.

Cynthia Moss, one of the leaders in elephant research 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)⁵.

Humour

Elephants have joined a small group of animals that share a trait that humans also exhibit known as self awareness. Joyce Poole, another elephant researcher on many occasions has observed wild African elephants at play. They apparently do things for their own and others entertainment. Elephants have been seen an elephant sucking up water, holding its trunk high in the air and then spraying the water like a fountain⁵.

Mimicry and Dialect

Recent studies have shown that elephants can also mimic sounds they hear. The discovery was found when Mlaika, an orphaned elephant would copy the sound of trucks passing by. Elephants are the only other land mammal other than primates that has this ability. So far, the only other animals that are thought to mimic sounds are whales, dolphins, primates 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 elephants. Compared with African elephants, Asian elephants use chirps that are different from African elephants that mainly make deep rumbling noises. Calimero also began to chirp and not make the deep calls like his species normally would.

Kosik, an Indian elephant at South Korea Zoo surprised trainers when they thought there was a person in his enclosure but it was actually Kosik imitating Jong Gap Kim, his trainer. Kosik had learnt some small words in Korean such as bal (foot), joa (good), and anja (sit) which were clearly audible. His mimcry is remarkably human-sounding⁷. Joyce Poole is beginning to research whether elephants do indeed have a dialect of their own, a trait that is rare in the animal kingdom. ⁸.

Tool Use

Elephants show a remarkable ability to use tools, despite having no hands. Instead, they use their trunk like an arm. 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. The elephant later went back to this spot for a drink. They also often use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves⁶. Elephants have also been known to drop very large rocks onto an electric fence to either ruin the fence or cut off the electricity⁵.

Problem Solving

Elephants are able to spend a lot of time working on problems. They are able to radically change their behavior to face a new challenge, a hallmark of complex intelligence. In the 1970’s at Marine World Africa, U.S.A, 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 will close when two opposite points are slid together. Bandula used to fiddle with the hook hook until it slid apart when it was aligned. Once she had freed herself, she would help the other elephants escape also⁴. In Bandula’s case and certainly with other captive elephants, there was an element of 'deception' involved during escapes, such as the animals looking around making sure no one was watching.⁴. 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, which was an inch thick.⁴ Ruby, an Asian elephant at Phoenix Zoo would often ‘eavesdrop’ onto 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 wore⁴.
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, usually they would 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 didn’t 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, elephants understand semantics/syntax. This is something very few species are able to do⁴.

References

2. “The Elephants Secret Sense: The Hidden Lives of the Wild Herds of Africa” Caitlin O’Connell, 174, 184

3. “Elephant Destiny” Martin Meredith Page 184-186

4. “The Octopus and the Orangutan: More Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity” Eugene Linden (2002), Pages 16-17, 104-105, 191

5. “Coming of Age with Elephants” Joyce Poole (1996) Pages 131-133, 143-144, 155-157

6. Elephantine Intelligence [1]

7. Kosik elephant mimicry of human

8. Elephant Mimicry