The truth behind elephant brainpower

[G_j]

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/elephants-and-their-shocking-math-abilities.html

Elephants and their Shocking Math Abilities
By Helen Jupiter, MNN

When it comes to brainpower, elephants may have more than just long memories. The BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8518831.stm?utm_source=Ode+Newsletters&utm_campaign=8a82f228db-good-news-weekly-rss&utm_medium=email reports that the sizeable pachyderms may have a host of other exceptional mental skills that have not been undocumented. Included among these potential abilities are an ear for voices and languages, as well as an eye for numbers.

A team of researchers from the University of Sussex, set out to discover how many elephant calls an individual elephant can remember, calls that are sometimes heard from as far as several kilometers away. Through a playback study focusing on the elephants of Amboseli National Park in Kenya, they determined that elephant matriarchs can learn to recognize at least 100 other unseen elephants by voice alone.

The Sussex team also observed behavior that led them to wonder whether the Amboseli elephants can discriminate between different human languages, specifically the Maa language of the Masai, the language of the Kamba people, and the English they hear spoken by the region’s tourists. Informal observations have shown an anxious, tense reaction to Maa, and a calm, relaxed reaction to English, but the Sussex researchers explain that it is still too early to know for sure, as they have just begun controlled study of the elephants’ reactions to recordings.

Meanwhile, a study out of Japan points to elephants’ remarkable numerical skills, such as the ability to distinguish between two similar quantities of objects. Elephants outperformed monkeys, apes, and even human children when tested on their aptitude for recognizing the difference between two quantities of objects — for example five from six.

Primates and children are capable of identifying the difference between smaller numbers of objects but are limited when it comes to discriminating between larger numbers. In contrast, the elephants involved in the study were equally good at telling five from six as one from two.

..more...

(The BBC article linked above, is well worth reading.)

[BrklynLiberal]

1. but..but..but aren't they just ignorant creatures here to serve mankind's needs?????

[defendandprotect]

2. Animals are our brothers and sisters on the planet ---

Love elephants -- !!

[pscot]

3. We know they like to get high

But they don't hold their likker very well. They tend to lose their inhibitions and stsrt flattening villages. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2583891.stm

[imnKOgnito]

4. Sounds like me in my drinking days.

Proof we're not all so different after all.

[G_j]

5. --

[Coventina]

6. I'm very sad that this thread is getting so little attention.

K&R

[Liberty Belle]

7. They are also very social. When a new baby elephant was born here

at San Diego's Wild Animal Park, the entire herd started trumpeting with joy, waking up startled campers there for a Valentine's eve sleepover!

[mzteris]

8. that's so cool!

I'd have loved to have heard/seen that.

[Control-Z]

10. I hope that was captured

somehow, on video or even audio. There must have been a ton of security cameras already running. Were you there? How do you know about it.

It sounds like it was very cool. I would love to have been there.

[G_j]

12. there is an audio sample of their language

at the BBC link

[G_j]

11. I believe they also mourn together

when a member of the group dies. (something I saw recently on TV, no link)

[AlienGirl]

13. Yes, and they revisit the bones of their dead, and caress and pass them around

Some of the bones are old enough that there's no way they still smell recognizably like the living owner. This suggests that the herd finds the bones based on memory of where the elephant died; if an elephant were to give directions, they might sound like this: "Go toward the watering hole until you get to the place where Alice died. Turn a quarter-circle right and keep going to where Dana's bones are. Then go uphill past where Martha's baby Henry was killedby lions, and you'll almost be to the place where Debbie's bones are..."

I don't know whether the bone-sites are still visited after the last one who knew the dead one is gone; I hope someone somewhere is investigating this.

Tucker

[dana_b]

9. amazing animals

we highly underestimate their abilities.