Is the elephant its own Swiss Army knife? (on elephant intelligence and tool use)
What really bothers me with the Frequently Asked Questions sheets one finds on every internet page is that, whilst they must stop some of the sillier questions being asked time and time again often they are put up as a substitute for a real person - so if you do have a sensible question (and surely some sensible questions are frequently asked) you cannot ask.
More frustratingly, however, my questions never seem to be frequently asked, perhaps I'm just strange, my case always seems to be unique - I'm sure that's just my odd nature and anachronistic impulse to not have my computer, my car, my television, my life set up in the same way as every single one of my colleagues, friends and fellow humans.
So you'll notice there is no F.A.Q. section on the www.helpingelephants.org website - although there are certainly some questions that qualify I try (not always succeeding) to answer them all in person and in a refreshing manner. There is one more reason, of course, to some F.A.Q's we simply don't know the answer...
...one such question is... "just how intelligent are elephants?"
To which the answer is something like "ummm.... errrr..... well.... the published data.... errr.... ummm.... the old books.... well... I've seen.... urm... big brain."
I have, in the past, compared them to a class of 16 year old children, some can be trusted with simple tasks without causing a problem, some are rebellious and would pick a fight in an empty room, some are sweet but you can trust them to endearingly do exactly the opposite of what is required, asked or assumed.
They recognise there are rules to living with us and usually stay within those boundaries - don't squash the two legged things, don't break the little boxes they enter to re-charge or the shiny, fast moving, slightly scary ones that swallow them and make them disappear for days (though Lynchee has an issue with my car - perhaps for the disappearing act it does on me, I flatter myself, she's not yet adult so is not yet part of this debate) - but they don't seem to be able control themselves over the basics; food, flatulence and flirting.
They know when they're about to cross these lines, you can see them watching like back row forwards at the ruck, inching offside, watching the ref, then going anyway only to be called back.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence has pointed to the intelligence of specific elephants down the years, but in the cold, hard, fluorescent light of scientific theory the writings of self confessed elephant lovers and philosophers counts for little; as I learned when trying to get my degree - the phrase 'anecdotal evidence suggests' is treated with the same disdain as 'I heard from that guy down the pub' (that that was exactly what I meant by the phrase when getting my degree is another point altogether).
So what can science tell us? How do those of us who believe in the intelligence of our charges persuade the scientists that the big grey ones know their stuff?
A recently published paper has been sitting on my desk for awhile, a paper that set out to answer the question that it, presumably, didn't know was frequently asked in Northern Thailand - I'll hand you over to the abstract of "Large brains and cognition: Where do elephants fit in?" a study by Hart, B.L., et al., published in the Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews (2007) (doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2007.05.012):
Among terrestrial mammals, elephants share the unique status, along with
humans and great apes, of having large brains, being long-lived and having offspring that require long periods of dependency. Elephants have the largest brains of all terrestrial mammals, including the greatest volume of cerebral cortex. In contrast to
what one might expect from such a large-brained species, the performance of elephants in cognitive feats, such as tool use, visual discrimination learning and
tests of ''insight'' behavior, is unimpressive in comparison to the performance by chimpanzees and, of course, humans. Where elephants do seem to excel is in long-term, extensive spatial-temporal and social memory. In addition, elephants appear to be somewhat unique among non-human species in their reactions to disabled and deceased conspecifics, exhibiting behaviors that are mindful of ''theory-of-mind'' phenomena. Information gleaned from studies on the neural cytoarchitecture of large brains reveals that the neurons of the cerebral cortex of elephants are much less densely populated than in large-brained primates. The interactions between cortical neurons would appear to be more global and less compartmentalized into local areas, and cortical information processing slower, than in great apes and humans. Although focused neural cytoarchitecture studies on the elephant are needed, this
comparative perspective on the cortical neural cytoarchitecture appears to relate to differences in behavior between elephants and their primate counterparts.
Hmmmm.... being scientists they seem to get bogged down in big words and I'm tempted to start skimming once I see a word like cytoarchitecture - luckily in the main paper they included a diagram for laymen such as us and that bit means that though elephants have bigger brains than anything else the bits that do the thinking seem to be more loosely spaced and are not necessarily as well connected (teenagers anyone?).
So what about the rest? Knowing in their gut and through anecdotal evidence that elephants are intelligent various scientist have set about testing that intelligence by using the same tests by which we proved great ape (and some crows) cognitive abilities and were surprised (and I get the impression disappointed - although scientists aren't allowed admit to disappointment when faced with evidence) to learn that the eles in question didn't really excel at any of them.
Where they do excel is in tests of memory, self recognition and what, if we saw it in humans would be called(though they scientifically beat around the bush, I'm going to use the dirty word) emotion.
They cite several cases to back this up and it does seem to be inarguable, the famous 'mirror test' self recognition experiment I've mentioned previously in these pages; another whereby food was placed on a tiltable frame just in the elephants' reach and the eles allowed to gorge for awhile, shortly the frame was fixed untiltable and out of reach but a stick was provided with which the elephants would physically be able to pull the food down, they failed the tool use test (though in the wild they would have pushed the tree over which counts as learned not reasoned behaviour) and yet another fascinating case that talked of a severe drought time in Africa, in a place where poaching was rife - those herds whose matriarch was over thirty-five years old survived well by leaving their normal habitat and making straight for old water holes while those herds whose matriarch had been hunted and replaced by one too young to remember the last drought stayed put and fared rather worse (defined by birth rate and infant mortality).
They cited Iain Douglas-Hamilton's work in using GPS collars to prove erstwhile anecdotal evidence of elephants coming to help those of the same species to whom they are unrelated and some clever experiments where elephants recognised remains of recently dead herd mates and then picked remains of unrelated elephants from those of other large African mammals.
Tool use, they surmise, in elephants seems to be limited to the basic use of a stick or branch to swish at flies or scratch those itches.
So elephants are not very good at exams but show an unusual amount of emotional behaviour, they know what they've learned but only a few among them seem to show advanced reasoning skills (teenagers again?). They also have, famously but now proven, a long memory.
Our friends, Hart et. al. - elephant apologists I feel - go on to explain a possible reason behind this and, surprise surprise, it is related to food - basically, while we and the apes have a very picky digestive system, unable to stomach many harsh plants, peels and shells causing us to develop tools to get at the juicy bits elephants have big, inefficient but sensible stomachs, no need for tools (though they do 'prepare' some foods using trunk and feet) just shove it all in, crunch and remember where the next mammoth amount of food is likely to be.
They also mention that an elephant often can't see the end of her truck, the main would be tool manipulator, making tool use other than against your own body a little pointless anyway, to which I might add that they've developed built in tools which, coupled with enormous accurately directable power make levers, hammers and such unnecessary.
When you have strength, learning ability, trunk, tusks, and a strong why bother using learning to use tools? - waste of good eating time.
More frustratingly, however, my questions never seem to be frequently asked, perhaps I'm just strange, my case always seems to be unique - I'm sure that's just my odd nature and anachronistic impulse to not have my computer, my car, my television, my life set up in the same way as every single one of my colleagues, friends and fellow humans.
So you'll notice there is no F.A.Q. section on the www.helpingelephants.org website - although there are certainly some questions that qualify I try (not always succeeding) to answer them all in person and in a refreshing manner. There is one more reason, of course, to some F.A.Q's we simply don't know the answer...
...one such question is... "just how intelligent are elephants?"
To which the answer is something like "ummm.... errrr..... well.... the published data.... errr.... ummm.... the old books.... well... I've seen.... urm... big brain."
I have, in the past, compared them to a class of 16 year old children, some can be trusted with simple tasks without causing a problem, some are rebellious and would pick a fight in an empty room, some are sweet but you can trust them to endearingly do exactly the opposite of what is required, asked or assumed.
They recognise there are rules to living with us and usually stay within those boundaries - don't squash the two legged things, don't break the little boxes they enter to re-charge or the shiny, fast moving, slightly scary ones that swallow them and make them disappear for days (though Lynchee has an issue with my car - perhaps for the disappearing act it does on me, I flatter myself, she's not yet adult so is not yet part of this debate) - but they don't seem to be able control themselves over the basics; food, flatulence and flirting.
They know when they're about to cross these lines, you can see them watching like back row forwards at the ruck, inching offside, watching the ref, then going anyway only to be called back.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence has pointed to the intelligence of specific elephants down the years, but in the cold, hard, fluorescent light of scientific theory the writings of self confessed elephant lovers and philosophers counts for little; as I learned when trying to get my degree - the phrase 'anecdotal evidence suggests' is treated with the same disdain as 'I heard from that guy down the pub' (that that was exactly what I meant by the phrase when getting my degree is another point altogether).
So what can science tell us? How do those of us who believe in the intelligence of our charges persuade the scientists that the big grey ones know their stuff?
A recently published paper has been sitting on my desk for awhile, a paper that set out to answer the question that it, presumably, didn't know was frequently asked in Northern Thailand - I'll hand you over to the abstract of "Large brains and cognition: Where do elephants fit in?" a study by Hart, B.L., et al., published in the Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews (2007) (doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2007.05.012):
Among terrestrial mammals, elephants share the unique status, along with
humans and great apes, of having large brains, being long-lived and having offspring that require long periods of dependency. Elephants have the largest brains of all terrestrial mammals, including the greatest volume of cerebral cortex. In contrast to
what one might expect from such a large-brained species, the performance of elephants in cognitive feats, such as tool use, visual discrimination learning and
tests of ''insight'' behavior, is unimpressive in comparison to the performance by chimpanzees and, of course, humans. Where elephants do seem to excel is in long-term, extensive spatial-temporal and social memory. In addition, elephants appear to be somewhat unique among non-human species in their reactions to disabled and deceased conspecifics, exhibiting behaviors that are mindful of ''theory-of-mind'' phenomena. Information gleaned from studies on the neural cytoarchitecture of large brains reveals that the neurons of the cerebral cortex of elephants are much less densely populated than in large-brained primates. The interactions between cortical neurons would appear to be more global and less compartmentalized into local areas, and cortical information processing slower, than in great apes and humans. Although focused neural cytoarchitecture studies on the elephant are needed, this
comparative perspective on the cortical neural cytoarchitecture appears to relate to differences in behavior between elephants and their primate counterparts.
Hmmmm.... being scientists they seem to get bogged down in big words and I'm tempted to start skimming once I see a word like cytoarchitecture - luckily in the main paper they included a diagram for laymen such as us and that bit means that though elephants have bigger brains than anything else the bits that do the thinking seem to be more loosely spaced and are not necessarily as well connected (teenagers anyone?).
So what about the rest? Knowing in their gut and through anecdotal evidence that elephants are intelligent various scientist have set about testing that intelligence by using the same tests by which we proved great ape (and some crows) cognitive abilities and were surprised (and I get the impression disappointed - although scientists aren't allowed admit to disappointment when faced with evidence) to learn that the eles in question didn't really excel at any of them.
Where they do excel is in tests of memory, self recognition and what, if we saw it in humans would be called(though they scientifically beat around the bush, I'm going to use the dirty word) emotion.
They cite several cases to back this up and it does seem to be inarguable, the famous 'mirror test' self recognition experiment I've mentioned previously in these pages; another whereby food was placed on a tiltable frame just in the elephants' reach and the eles allowed to gorge for awhile, shortly the frame was fixed untiltable and out of reach but a stick was provided with which the elephants would physically be able to pull the food down, they failed the tool use test (though in the wild they would have pushed the tree over which counts as learned not reasoned behaviour) and yet another fascinating case that talked of a severe drought time in Africa, in a place where poaching was rife - those herds whose matriarch was over thirty-five years old survived well by leaving their normal habitat and making straight for old water holes while those herds whose matriarch had been hunted and replaced by one too young to remember the last drought stayed put and fared rather worse (defined by birth rate and infant mortality).
They cited Iain Douglas-Hamilton's work in using GPS collars to prove erstwhile anecdotal evidence of elephants coming to help those of the same species to whom they are unrelated and some clever experiments where elephants recognised remains of recently dead herd mates and then picked remains of unrelated elephants from those of other large African mammals.
Tool use, they surmise, in elephants seems to be limited to the basic use of a stick or branch to swish at flies or scratch those itches.
So elephants are not very good at exams but show an unusual amount of emotional behaviour, they know what they've learned but only a few among them seem to show advanced reasoning skills (teenagers again?). They also have, famously but now proven, a long memory.
Our friends, Hart et. al. - elephant apologists I feel - go on to explain a possible reason behind this and, surprise surprise, it is related to food - basically, while we and the apes have a very picky digestive system, unable to stomach many harsh plants, peels and shells causing us to develop tools to get at the juicy bits elephants have big, inefficient but sensible stomachs, no need for tools (though they do 'prepare' some foods using trunk and feet) just shove it all in, crunch and remember where the next mammoth amount of food is likely to be.
They also mention that an elephant often can't see the end of her truck, the main would be tool manipulator, making tool use other than against your own body a little pointless anyway, to which I might add that they've developed built in tools which, coupled with enormous accurately directable power make levers, hammers and such unnecessary.
When you have strength, learning ability, trunk, tusks, and a strong why bother using learning to use tools? - waste of good eating time.
Posted by John Roberts at Sat, 15 Sep 2007 07:34:00 GMT 
Categories: General Conservation, Regional Elephants
Categories: General Conservation, Regional Elephants
...oddly enough, while I was contemplating the questions above someone else was putting the below quote from Frans de Waal, one of the scientists involved in the mirror experiments, onto the internet - so, anecdotal evidence, but from a renowned scientist!
A full interview in a magazine called The Believer (?) is available and goes into Chimp, Bonobo and Human behaviour. For this here blog we'll stick to the elephant behaviour and stay out of the religion!
__________________________________
Two elephants walk together at night. (No, this isn't a joke--it's a scene from a wildlife reserve in Thailand.) There is heavy rain and the older elephant slips and falls in the mud. She's unable to get up. The younger elephant, unrelated to her companion, stays with her for most of the night. The next day a group of mahouts, elephant caretakers from the wildlife reserve, try to hoist the elephant up to her feet with braces and ropes. In all the commotion--a crowd has gathered to watch the rescue--the younger elephant remains by the side of her fallen friend. The mahouts and the crowd shout for her to move out of the way, so they can get better leverage. But she won't budge. Instead, she burrows her head under the body of the other elephant and tries to lift her up. She does this several times, risking injury in the attempts. Incredibly, the elephant appears to recognize that the mahouts want to help rather than hurt her friend. She times her pushes, or so it seemed to me, with the hoisting of the mahouts.
Reply to this
Check out "elephant intelligence" on wikipedia. Elephants are only born with 35% of their adult brain...this is the lowest of any animal indicating they are the ones that have the most learning to do rather than just instinctive behavior. Their brain is also more complex than ours with just as many neurons (compared with dolphins who actually have very few neurons and more instinctive behavior).
Reply to this
...yes, I'd come across that argument somewhere else too - think we have to go with our guts on this one, otherwise we'll getted bogged down in scientific argument and counter-argument.
Reply to this
I guess so, but everyone goes on about how "dolphins are smarter than humans! their brain is the biggest of any animal! etc" when actually, not all dolphins are equally intelligent and their behavior is mostly instinctual and they don't even have the largest EQ of any animal (treeshrews do) etc.
I think elephants are also far more emotional than any other animal which is another key to their intelligence.
Reply to this
In order to prove something scientifically you must define it as a function of something.
If you define intelligence as a function of brain growth after birth then elephants win out, if you define it as tool use or problem solving (though my little two year old, Lynchee is pretty good at problem solving) then they lose out, if you define it as self awareness in a mirror then some get it, some don't.
Personally however, I can shave without cutting myself (most mornings)(self awareness - pass), can play Tetris and do the cryptic crossword (problem solving - pass) but hit my thumb every time I pick up a hammer and cannot, no matter how I try (and I've tried) join two bits of anything (wood, metal, paper) using any method (nails, screws, joints, welding, glue) at a right angle or saw a cut in a straight line (tool use - fail) and we all come in 3rd (? - I didn't look that up and my memory is not as good as perhaps it should be according to the scientists) in the brain growth after birth ratings (brain growth - proven!).
My Dad is far quicker with the crossword, is a genius with hammers and tools but can't reverse his car using just the mirrors, my Mum (who can perform mental arithmetic far faster than myself and knows the Latin root for many words) is constantly berated (by my Dad) for not being able to change gear smoothly but can reverse her car without straining her neck, my accountant can't divide a number by ten without a calculator and I've never been in a car with him.
My wife can run a massive hotel department, can speak four languages more or less fluently and write in two extremely different alphabets and yet she agreed to marry me (whereas my parents and accountant had no choice but to associate with me). Mahouts, in general, manage the mirror test, aren't as hot on problem solving but can build anything you care to ask for with a variety of sharp and nasty tools which would only result in loss of digits for myself.
Where do I fit in?
The species wide arguments break down when you add character into the equation - as with humans, some elephants are smart some are not so, some are good at some things and some are good at others - perhaps that they have learned to work as a team should be considered the ultimate proof of intelligence?
All of this searching for increments in the rating of intelligence assumes that we are the most intelligent of them all; are we looking for pure intelligence or human like qualities that we consider define intelligent humans?
Meanwhile I run an elephant camp but allow myself to spend my days doing largely pointless admin. when I should be playing with elephants and pondering interesting philosophical points such as this - perhaps I'm the dumbest of them all?
PS. I don't know any dolphins and have to get to work now, two more mahout performance appraisals to do!
Reply to this
Yea this is very true. I guess trying to say what animal is the most intelligent is subject to so many things. And you are right, just what is intelligence? And how can you really define it?
Yea I brought up dolphins because when people hear the phrase "animal intelligence" a lot of people think "dolphins".
Reply to this
...yes, didn't want to upset any flipper fans though.
Reply to this
this is true. I love dolphins, but their 'intelligence' is definetly over exaggerated.
Reply to this