| | These guys are amazing. This is all from the wiki page but everything seemingly has a valid citation. I simply copy and pasted a lot of interesting text I picked out but every single paragraph is astounding. It is wiki, though, so go ahead and check out the page and see everything and its citations for yourself.
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A wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, art, play, a sense of humor, altruism, use of tools, compassion, self-awareness, memory and possibly language all point to a highly intelligent species that are thought to be equal with cetaceans and primates.
Two members of the family were shot by poachers, who were subsequently chased off by the remaining elephants. Although one of the elephants died, the other, named Tina, remained standing but with knees beginning to give way. Two family members, Trista and Teresia (Tina’s mother) walked to either side of Tina and leaned in to hold her up. Alas, Tina was so weak she fell to the ground and died. However, Trista and Teresia did not give up but continually tried to lift her. They managed to get Tina into a sitting position, but her body was lifeless and fell to the ground again. As the other elephant family members became more intensely involved in the aid, they tried to put grass into Tina’s mouth. Teresia then put her tusks beneath Tina’s head and front quarters and proceeded to lift her. As she did so, her right tusk broke completely off, right up to the lip and nerve cavity. The elephants gave up trying to lift Tina but didn’t leave her; instead, they began to bury her in a shallow grave and throw leaves over her body. They stood over Tina for the night, and then began to leave in the morning. The last to leave was Teresia.
Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress. In India, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout (elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to investigate the hold up and noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.
A ranch herder was out on his own with camels when he came across a family of elephants. The matriarch charged at him and knocked him over with her trunk, breaking one of his legs. In the evening, when he didn’t return, a search party was sent in a truck to find him . When the party discovered him, he was being guarded by an elephant. The animal charged the truck, so they shot over her 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 day and would gently touch him with her trunk.
Elephants in Africa will self-medicate by chewing on the leaves of a tree from the Boraginaceae family, which induces labor. Kenyan humans also use this tree for the same purpose.
Elephants are the only other species other than humans and neanderthals known to have a ritual around death. 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. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves. When an elephant is hurt, other elephants (also even if they are unrelated) will aid them.
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 to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream but then the entire herd 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 return.
On many occasions, they have buried dead or sleeping humans or aided them when they were hurt.
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 losing 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, unharmed.
Elephants have been seen sucking up water, holding their trunk high in the air, and then spraying the water like a fountain.
Kosik, an Indian elephant at Everland Amusement Park, South Korea surprised trainers when they thought there was a person in his enclosure but it was actually Kosik imitating Jong Gap Kim, his trainer. Kosik can make sounds imitating up to eight Korean words, including "sit", "no", "yes" and "lie down".
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.
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.
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, they can understand semantics/syntax of some of the words they hear. This is something thought to be very rare in the animal kingdom.
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 wore. (If you haven't seen elephants painting, see on youtube here.)
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| | Posted 12/10/2008 3:54 PM - 6 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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