Why're you wasting your time? I could've told you that (on the intelligence of scientists)
Elephant tuned people such as yourselves can't have missed the recent publication of yet another paper in which some foreign boffins came & told us what we thought we already knew. With a series of rigs, nets, rope & not a bit of perseverance they deduced that elephants were clever and could work together.
Well duh! Surely everyone who has sat in the back of a Land Rover in Africa or Sri Lanka and seen the great herds wondering around in groups would have to guess the reason they stuck together was some form of cooperation, the fact we've seen videos on youtube of mothers and aunts helping babies who're stuck in the mud tells us so, why waste your massive brains to tell us what we already know? Anyone who's seen the elephants pick up a mahout's sandals for him after the bathing or read about how the elephants helped us win wars or remove our big trees must know they cooperate, even with us, right? Get a little deeper and read the old books, the ones the teak wallahs wrote between their chota pegs (or when they got home & were living in dreary East Anglia (sorry East Anglia) reading their diaries and dreaming, misty eyed, of the jungle), every one of them will have a chapter full of stories of elephants helping each other seemingly unbidden, in some cases working out human problems before the humans had discovered the problem. I've spoken with people who swear elephants have saved their lives from either other elephants or rhinos, I've personally ridden a logging elephant who helped me pass a mahouting exam (don't tell the examiners) by stacking a pile of logs with zero input from myself.
If we know it, what's the point in wasting all this time & energy just so you can write big papers & get on TV? I could've told you that, why aren't I on TV?
At this stage I'll let you in on a secret, I've told that I knew elephants could cooperate long before the paper made the big time, but I knew because the scientist who drove the research is a friend of mine and is now Head of Research for our little Foundation, Dr Josh Plotnik. I knew because he showed me the videos and told me what they meant, not only to him but to the outside scientific world.
Now, let me try and go through it in terms I understand, apologies if I take it a little slow but, as you know, I'm a bit thick so my logical steps need to be small (& Josh is currently, for a little while, counting crows in Cambridge and so can't slap the back of my head & correct me if I get it wrong).
The intricate design of the rig is not that important, suffice to say, Josh and the mahouts devised a system that required two elephants to work at the same time in order to get a treat.
The point of the work was not to prove they cooperate, many species cooperate, the point of the work was to see if they understand why they need to cooperate and understand the nature of cooperation altogether. Are they clever like ants who always seem to build their nests in the right place or clever like us who understand that helping each other can have mutual benefit (& hopefully are not stupid like us as to sometimes choose not to cooperate even though it is to our mutual detriment).
In order to do this Josh adapted an experiment that had been used with Chimps way back in the 30's (if you're going to convince the scientific world you have discovered what you think you have discovered it is best to use or adapt techniques that have already been agreed prove the things you want to prove, albeit in different situations).
In the video below they built a table too heavy for one Chimp to pull to see if they would work together to get the food (for the second experiment they let one chimp go hungry & the other well fed to see if they truly understood - hey, what goes in the '30's stays in the '30's).
Now, you'll be glad to hear Josh isn't in the business of starving elephants and it is next to impossible to build something heavy enough for one elephant to have trouble pulling it but get it so that two can do it without strain.
Josh himself will explain how he adapted the experiment in a video at the end, what I'm trying to do is explain why all these complex steps were needed in the first place when we all 'know' elephants are smart and work together.
For the first test they let two elephants take a look at the experimental rig. Lo & behold, they approached the rig, and after a very short time, in unison, began to pull the ropes, drag a table towards them and eat the tasty corn.
Proves they know how to cooperate, right?
Well, no say the scientists. It proves that when they see a rope they pull a rope in a manner they had been previously trained to do.
Convincing scientists of things you already know is a tricky business, it seems.
For the second test they let the elephants look at the rig again, but this time left a time gap between letting each elephant go. This one took a little time, but eventually (though, for those who're used to Chimps or Children remarkably quickly) they learned to wait patiently until their partner arrived (up to 45 seconds) and then, in unison, pull the ropes, drag the table towards them and eat the tasty corn.
Proves they know how to cooperate, right?
Well, no. It proves they know how to pull a rope and they know they need their partner around in order achieve the goal of tasty snacks but, if you're a scientist it doesn't mean they understand the nature of the task before them nor that they are actually cooperating.
For the third test the nasty scientists set them up to fail, they hid one of the ropes, there could be no tasty treats for these elephants. They let the elephants go, this time, after awhile, they all learned to inspect, they all learned to note that the task was impossible &, without even attempting it, they turned around & went home.
Proves they know how to cooperate, right?
Finally, our scientist friends are satisfied. They now believe us, in order to show this behaviour & not attempt the impossible task they MUST understand the nature of task before them, the nature of the work they both have to do and, crucially, that they cannot succeed unless both of them are able to play their part.
That's not all, purely by chance and (to me who swears they're all different) most exciting, one elephant (& only one) seemed to understand the task so well that she worked out she could win the prize without expending any energy herself - and that's pretty much the basic goal of all things living in the wild, to get as much energy input (in the form of food) with as little energy output (in the form of hunting or pushing down trees).
She worked out that if she merely put her foot on the rope her 'friend' would turn up & do all the work. Josh has told me I'm not allowed to read too much into this in the way of her having a supervisory rule or make jokes about the fact her being female allowing her to seem smarter than the rest &, most importantly, that the fact she developed an alternative strategy does not mean she was cheating.
In the game of survival (hard wired into these non-selectively bred beasts) there are no rules, no-one can cheat, you can only learn a better way to play the game and it is this that will have implications for wild elephant protection & human elephant conflict mitigation; to my mind, Josh has proved that it we have to be very careful in rely on solutions that keep elephants and humans (or crops) apart by trickery, be it electric fences, chillies or bees: when presented with a soluble problem, not every elephant, but some elephants are able to step back and seek a solution when the prize is easy energy input.
Far easier, in he long run, to find a way to move the unnaturally high energy foods from what used to be the elephants' territory & let it become so once again.
Of course, easy to type does not mean easy to do - but don't tell me Neu-un hasn't warned you, they will get to your corn (watch Josh's official video below)...
Posted by John Roberts at Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:43:00 GMT 
Categories: Golden Triangle Elephants, Scientific Research in Camp, Regional Elephants
Tags: Josh Plotnik Thai Elephant conservation centre cooperation intelligence
Categories: Golden Triangle Elephants, Scientific Research in Camp, Regional Elephants
Tags: Josh Plotnik Thai Elephant conservation centre cooperation intelligence
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