One of the pleasures of traveling in India is to unexpectedly run into elephants. Almost always decked out by the mahout, they're typically found blessing visitors at temples and festivals, strolling down a street, or giving rides at tourist sites and national parks. I’ve also seen wild herds in the African savanna and tropical forest, and in the grassy woods of Uttaranchal and the hills of Kerala. But elephants never cease to amaze and delight me.
That elephants are smart is common knowledge, but a new study has moved them into a super-elite club of smart animals: the great apes and humans
Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror and use their reflections to explore hidden parts of themselves, a measure of subjective self-awareness that until now has been shown definitively only in humans and apes, researchers reported … The findings confirm a long-standing suspicion among scientists that elephants, with their big brains, complex societies and reputation for helping ill herdmates, have a sufficiently developed sense of identity to pass the challenging "mirror self-recognition test."
... The new study involved three female Asian elephants at the zoo, in New York City…In a series of experiments, the elephants first explored the mirror -- reaching behind it with their trunks, kneeling before it and even trying to climb it -- gathering clues that the mirror image was just that, an image.
That was followed by an eerie sequence in which the animals made slow, rhythmic movements while tracking their reflections. Then, like teenagers, they got hooked … All three conducted oral self-exams. Maxine, a 35-year-old female, even used the tip of her trunk to get a better look inside her mouth. She also used her trunk to slowly pull her ear in front of the mirror so she could examine it -- "self-directed" behaviors the zookeepers had never seen before.
Moreover, one elephant, Happy, 34, passed the most difficult measure of self-recognition: the mark test. The researchers painted a white X on her left cheek, visible only in the mirror. Later, after moving in and out of view of the mirror, Happy stood directly before the reflective surface and touched the tip of her trunk to the mark repeatedly -- an act that, among other insights, requires an understanding that the mark is not on the mirror but on her body.
The rest of the article is here and includes video footage of the above mirror test. My partner who loves elephants called it “impossibly cute” and I agree. For lots of still photos of elephants from India and Africa, click here.
your photos are absolutely astounding..thankyou ev
Posted by: evsmith | March 12, 2007 at 08:18 AM