Define tool use: Lynchee 1; Behavioural Scientists 0
...I know everyone thinks their kid is the smartest in the class and will grow up to change the world one day, I've already written of Pumpui's footballing abilities (though I think lately she was watching the World Cup and will take up rugby if she can ever work out the off-side rule) but I have to say I think we might really be on to something here.
A while back I shared with you a paper that dipped extensively into elephant intelligence and concluded that whilst elephants showed great social skill and an ability to learn and remember the useful tricks for survival they weren't too hot when it came to reasoning - when faced with a problem that was entirely new they had difficulty piecing together logical steps that we would expect the great apes to solve.
I agree with this finding to a certain extent, elephants seem to be frightened by things they haven't seen before - an elephant that grew up in the deep, denuded Northern Thai forests might well be scared of domestic buffalo, Nong Dah, who grew up in Bangkok is scared of being in the jungle by herself. In Nepal all the Tiger Tops elephants see rhinos of all sizes everyday in the jungle but were petrified of a little baby orphaned rhino that lived with humans, to elephants, it seems, if it doesn't compute it is scary.
But the other day I watched what I reckon cannot be anything other than reasoned behaviour from Lynchee, an eighteen month old baby. It is in our new barn where she has the run of things when guests are learning in camp (if she would just agree not to try to be the centre of attention and let the big eles have their day without interfering of course we wouldn't need her in the barn - but that's another story!).
A while back I shared with you a paper that dipped extensively into elephant intelligence and concluded that whilst elephants showed great social skill and an ability to learn and remember the useful tricks for survival they weren't too hot when it came to reasoning - when faced with a problem that was entirely new they had difficulty piecing together logical steps that we would expect the great apes to solve.
I agree with this finding to a certain extent, elephants seem to be frightened by things they haven't seen before - an elephant that grew up in the deep, denuded Northern Thai forests might well be scared of domestic buffalo, Nong Dah, who grew up in Bangkok is scared of being in the jungle by herself. In Nepal all the Tiger Tops elephants see rhinos of all sizes everyday in the jungle but were petrified of a little baby orphaned rhino that lived with humans, to elephants, it seems, if it doesn't compute it is scary.
But the other day I watched what I reckon cannot be anything other than reasoned behaviour from Lynchee, an eighteen month old baby. It is in our new barn where she has the run of things when guests are learning in camp (if she would just agree not to try to be the centre of attention and let the big eles have their day without interfering of course we wouldn't need her in the barn - but that's another story!).
Posted by John Roberts at Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:47:00 GMT 
Categories: Golden Triangle Elephants, Regional Elephants
Categories: Golden Triangle Elephants, Regional Elephants
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