slingblade
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- Joined
- Jul 28, 2005
- Messages
- 23,466
I was watching a show yesterday about animals and intellect, a PBS Nature series. At one point, the habits of elephants with the bones of their own species was brought up, and some things were said that made me ponder.
Not verbatim, mind you:
"Elephants fondle and inspect only the bones of their own species. They touch, sniff, and otherwise handle them, almost compulsively. They are never seen to do this with the bones of other animals."
Ok, my train of thought:
Before a dead elephant becomes a pile of bones, it's still recognizably an elephant. It's got skin, still holds its shape, and still smells like an elephant. Elephants probably most often die in areas where other elephants are, or have been and will be again (along the routes to food, water, breeding, etc.). Other elephants are going to come along and see this dead elephant.
As it is still recognizable, immediately after death, as an elephant, it seems to me that other elephants are cognizant enough to recognize it. I've seen elephants push and prod a downed but living elephant in an effort to rouse it to its feet. I've seen them handle it, touch it, and so forth. In so doing, they transmit their own smells to it.
As the body decomposes, elephants continue to touch it. As it begins to look less and less like an elephant, it still retains the smells of other elephants--still smells like one of them, but with the odor of decomposition about it, as well. But still, it smells like one of them. Finally, the dead elephant is reduced to bones. But other elephants continue to touch these familiar-smelling bones, as the program said, almost obsessively.
Is the reason elephants don't do this with other bones because those other bones don't continue to smell like them through this process? Is that really all there is to it? Not because they recognize a piece of a broken skull as being elephant skull, but simply because they've transmitted so much olfactory information to it through handling it repeatedly?
I'd like to see experiments done with elephant bones that have been sterilized, rendered odorless or nearly so, along with the bones of other animals that have been impregnated with the smells of elephants, and see if it's the bones they recognize, or the odors they themselves have placed there.
If in such an experiment, elephants do fondle the bones that smell most like them, regardless of the source, then that would seem to rather discount what the show was promoting: That elephants know their own, even when it's just a tusk or a bit of skull. That they would fondle familiar-smelling bones, even if they came from a lion, or giraffe.
Did I hit upon something, there? What do you think?
Not verbatim, mind you:
"Elephants fondle and inspect only the bones of their own species. They touch, sniff, and otherwise handle them, almost compulsively. They are never seen to do this with the bones of other animals."
Ok, my train of thought:
Before a dead elephant becomes a pile of bones, it's still recognizably an elephant. It's got skin, still holds its shape, and still smells like an elephant. Elephants probably most often die in areas where other elephants are, or have been and will be again (along the routes to food, water, breeding, etc.). Other elephants are going to come along and see this dead elephant.
As it is still recognizable, immediately after death, as an elephant, it seems to me that other elephants are cognizant enough to recognize it. I've seen elephants push and prod a downed but living elephant in an effort to rouse it to its feet. I've seen them handle it, touch it, and so forth. In so doing, they transmit their own smells to it.
As the body decomposes, elephants continue to touch it. As it begins to look less and less like an elephant, it still retains the smells of other elephants--still smells like one of them, but with the odor of decomposition about it, as well. But still, it smells like one of them. Finally, the dead elephant is reduced to bones. But other elephants continue to touch these familiar-smelling bones, as the program said, almost obsessively.
Is the reason elephants don't do this with other bones because those other bones don't continue to smell like them through this process? Is that really all there is to it? Not because they recognize a piece of a broken skull as being elephant skull, but simply because they've transmitted so much olfactory information to it through handling it repeatedly?
I'd like to see experiments done with elephant bones that have been sterilized, rendered odorless or nearly so, along with the bones of other animals that have been impregnated with the smells of elephants, and see if it's the bones they recognize, or the odors they themselves have placed there.
If in such an experiment, elephants do fondle the bones that smell most like them, regardless of the source, then that would seem to rather discount what the show was promoting: That elephants know their own, even when it's just a tusk or a bit of skull. That they would fondle familiar-smelling bones, even if they came from a lion, or giraffe.
Did I hit upon something, there? What do you think?
