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How smart are elephants?

a_unique_person said:
I have seen a display of elephants painting in Thailand, and I wasn't very impressed. They are amazing animals, but it wasn't hard to tell that they weren't very happy with having to jump through the hoops as they had to. I felt sorry for them.
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I don't know if they were unhappy - they appeared to be concentrating real hard, and weren't exactly trumpeting with delight, but I'm not sure what a happy elephant looks like, actually. It's a task for them, I'm sure. Their muscle control in their trunk is excellent, but it usually works in much broader sweeping movements. Ever notice that when they're reaching for food they often miss left, miss right, then center on the target? How difficult to get that little paintbrush onto the precise spot on a piece of paper? So I just reckoned they were working hard at something.

The other elephants at the particular park mentioned seemed fit and well treated. But like I said in my follow-up post, they it was a pretty commercial and tacky show. I didn't think to be greedy and see how much they'd sell one of the paintings for. Reading up on the NEI and elephant painting today I noticed that the pics sell for about three hundred bucks - and those are the abstracts. There have been charity auctions where they've fetched thousands. If I get back up there, I'll try to buy one and we can auction it for one of the TAM or Scholarship auctions. It'd make a good "link" back to an interesting conversation or two on animal intelligence (some of my favorite threads here).
 
Foolmewunz said:
I don't know if they were unhappy - they appeared to be concentrating real hard, and weren't exactly trumpeting with delight, but I'm not sure what a happy elephant looks like, actually. It's a task for them, I'm sure. Their muscle control in their trunk is excellent, but it usually works in much broader sweeping movements. Ever notice that when they're reaching for food they often miss left, miss right, then center on the target? How difficult to get that little paintbrush onto the precise spot on a piece of paper? So I just reckoned they were working hard at something.

The other elephants at the particular park mentioned seemed fit and well treated. But like I said in my follow-up post, they it was a pretty commercial and tacky show. I didn't think to be greedy and see how much they'd sell one of the paintings for. Reading up on the NEI and elephant painting today I noticed that the pics sell for about three hundred bucks - and those are the abstracts. There have been charity auctions where they've fetched thousands. If I get back up there, I'll try to buy one and we can auction it for one of the TAM or Scholarship auctions. It'd make a good "link" back to an interesting conversation or two on animal intelligence (some of my favorite threads here).
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There was one particular elephant, that had the hardest task to do, that didn't want to do it. They 'discplined' it till it did. The paintings were sold, which seemed to be the point of the exercise. I didn't feel at all inclined to buy one.
 
elephants have a large brain. There is likely a purpose for such an investment. I think it is more than a simple brain wt./ body wt. ratio. Rhinos manage a similar life with a tiny brain.
 
It was in the news (and on here) about an elephant who had passed the self-awareness test. Obviously to what extent the mirror test actually tests self-awareness, and to what extent self-awareness equates to intelligence are contested, but it does certainly seem that elephants are one of the top animal intellects... Not as clever as the orangutans mind :)

Here is the you tube clip

 
If elephants are so smart then how come they keep getting caught in those fishing nets huh.
 
Elephants are probably a lot smarter than many would actually think.

INRM
 
portlandatheist said:
There is also evidence that elephants mourn their dead
What I'm curious is if elephants ever differentiate between just any dead elephant vs a former relative or herd member
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I believe they do. Refreshed my false memories there.

Well it looked like they did from the sounds of this:

new research suggests that they may, like humans, be able to recognise their own kind among the dead.

But then the actual story said this:
* Elephants showed a much stronger interest in ivory than in the other objects, including the elephant skulls;
* They also showed a stronger preference for elephant skulls over other "non-elephant" objects, including the skulls of other large mammals such as rhinos and buffalo;
* Elephants showed interest by sniffing then feeling the elephant skulls - and especially the ivory - with the trunk, then gently rolling or stroking with their feet;
* Elephants did not, however, show greater interest in the skulls of close relatives over those of other elephants.
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Of course we don't know from this if these bones were no longer recognizable. Would a human know a skull was that of uncle Joe's if it were not in the place they buried him? Only if he had a special gold tooth or something else that was recognizable. Think I'll keep looking.
 
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Here are a couple interesting anecdotes for what they are worth:
[In India an] elephant was following a truck and, upon command, was pulling logs out of it to place in pre-dug holes in preparation for a ceremony. The elephant continued to follow his master's commands until they reached one hole where the elephant would not lower the log into the hole but held it in mid-air above the hole. When the mahout [elephant driver] approached the hole to investigate, he found a dog sleeping at the bottom; only after chasing the dog away would the elephant lower the post into the hole. (3, p. 137)

[In South Africa] it was observed that an elephant, after digging a hole and drinking water, stripped bark from a nearby tree, chewed it into a large ball, plugged the hole, and covered it with sand. Later he removed the sand, unplugged the hole, and had water to drink. (3, p. 137)

Many young elephants develop the naughty habit of plugging up the wooden bell they wear around their necks with good stodgy mud or clay so that the clappers cannot ring, in order to steal silently into a grove of cultivated bananas at night. There they will have a whale of a time quietly stuffing, eating not only the bunches of bananas but the leaves and indeed the whole tree as well, and they will do this just beside the hut occupied by the owner of the grove, without waking him or any of his family. (1, p.78)
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The same source noted they use tools to reach places to scratch that they cannot reach with their trunks. That's a step up from just rubbing your bum on a tree trunk.
 
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Well, I came across that video independently tonight, and was mightily impressed. So I did a search here.

This thread could do with an elephant sized BUMP so more people get to see the video.
 
Even if it was positively reinforced, it's pretty precise painting. So it's impressive regardless. Unless the person was holding the trunk and guiding it.

I think they are up there not too far below the dolphins and great apes. I think the African grey parrot was really high too.

Edit: Yeah it was the African grey parrot. I saw the full version of this vid in one of my psych classes.

 
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IIRC, the elephants can only produce representational art when the mahout has a hand on one tusk. It's a variant of the [swiki]Clever Hans Effect[/swiki].
 
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The elephant who paints the "self-portrait" is Hong, the star painter of the Mae Taeng Elephant Camp on Thailand. Vanda Harvey, an artist from London, went there to see if she could "liberate her from her day job of painting other elephants!". See the article here. She found out that Hong is guided by her trainer, standing beside her with a hand on a tusk "almost like a technician working with robotic arms".

Vanda wanted to see what would happen when Hong painted without being guided by her trainer:

She starts her pupil off with some charcoal, while Hong’s trainer steps back to avoid influencing her. “It’s amazingly intense for me, watching Hong draw,” says Vanda, “because I didn’t know what was going to happen.” After the charcoal comes paint, and a two-metre canvas is quickly filled with sweeping, colourful, almost joyful strokes. The next day, Vanda supervises Hong as she completes a series of canvases to be taken back to London. Vanda is confident that the paintings will stand up against competition from human artists: “There are far worse paintings hanging in galleries all over the world as we speak,” she says. “Probably some with far less emotion in, and far less tension – and certainly far less joy!”
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I hope that Hong is really enjoying herself.
 
My (uneducated) guess when I saw this video last week was that the trainer was more involved than the video shows, but it is very impressive nonetheless.
 
Third Eye Open said:
I am of the opinion that elephants are not mindless creatures.

But I think it would be much more interesting to see what the elephant would paint if just given a canvas and brush with no 'coaching' involved.
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having been to art school...

i am of the opinion that H. sapiens are (generally) not mindless creatures...

but i found it not very interesting to see what the average human would paint if given just a canvas and brush with no 'coaching' involved.
 
ps i'm currently living in Thailand; as soon as i get a chance i'll visit the Mae Taeng elephant camp. it's up near Chiang Mai and i may be going up there in the next few weeks. if anything interesting comes of it i'll post here.
 
quarky said:
elephants have a large brain. There is likely a purpose for such an investment. I think it is more than a simple brain wt./ body wt. ratio. Rhinos manage a similar life with a tiny brain.
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they are quite social, too. that usually has a lot to do with animal intelligence (chimps like us, for example), from what i understand. i don't think the paintings say much about their intelligence either way, except that they're clearly a lot smarter as individuals than, oh i don't know, a gecko. i suspect however that if ant pheromone trails could show up as colored inks, and a canvas were placed so that they had to walk over it to fulfill their various tasks, anthills could produce some pretty decent abstract art.
 
Dr Adequate said:
IIRC, the elephants can only produce representational art when the mahout has a hand on one tusk. It's a variant of the [swiki]Clever Hans Effect[/swiki].
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There is some doubt about the authenticity of the degree of the elephant's actual input/ involvement in the creative process being expressed by the regulars over on the Usenet group alt.folkelore.urban -- camera cuts, fake trunks and pre-tracing being suggested.

YMMV & etc.
 
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