Academic Research on Elephants

The Intelligence of Beasts (source 1)

WOODARD, COLIN. “The Intelligence of Beasts.” Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 57, no. 40, July 2011, pp. B14–B15. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=62666121&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

I initially found this article by looking up the keywords "animal intelligence" and "elephants" on the Academic Search Complete engine. By looking up those keywords, they gave me a list of results that talked not only about elephant intelligence but other animals as well. Upon reading this article, the researchers conducted a study about elephant cognition. The author mentioned multiple experiments including a string pulling test between 2 elephants to see how they interact with each other to achieve a certain goal as well as 2 other experiments testing their ability to "categorize danger" and "'invisible displacement'" (Woodward B14-B15). They tested the elephant's categorization by placing clothing associated with native groups, one of whom imposes a danger on elephants, and another that did not interact with them as much. The other experiment was done by using samples of the elephants' urine and displacing it around the environment to see if the elephant would notice that their pack is out of order. The results showed that elephants can understand that they must work together in the pull string test to achieve their goal and that they exert fearful behavior based on typical outfits that they correlate with danger, such as "the Masai (who sometimes spear elephants" (Woodward B14-B15). The last experiment that tested their memory showed that elephants have the ability to keep track of their family members and pack even when put in situations where they can't visibly see them, so they understand "'person permanence and invisible displacement'" (Woodward B14-B15). Overall, Woodward's conclusions are that elephant senses and cognition are a lot more advanced than we thought and this will tell us more about the evolution of animal and human brains. This study and article helps us understand that elephants are capable of major talents such as categorizing dangers that are correlated to humans, which is something we never really thought of. That categorization tells me that we humans may have impacted these endangered species negatively to the point where they can tell they are in danger from a piece of clothing.

elephant string pull test

Brainy Elephants: One More Way They're as Smart as Humans (source 2)

Greenwood, Veronique. “Brainy Elephants: One More Way They’re as Smart as Humans.” Time.Com, Oct. 2013, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=91264856&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

The second source is written by Veronique Greenwood about how smart elephants can be. I found this article when I also looked up the same keywords as the article above. I used "animal intelligence" and "elephants". The research that was done was an experiment testing to see if elephants understood a simple gesture, such as pointing. They wanted to test this because if elephants understood pointing, then their cognition is much more advanced than we thought since apparently even our closest animal ancestor, the chimpanzees, "have a lot of difficulty with pointing" (Greenwood 1). They tested the elephants by setting up food in 2 buckets and had the researcher point to the food with the most food in it, to which the elephant responded by going to that bucket. These results had the researchers deduce that the elephants either already knew this gesture because they "learned to interpret pointing from their time around humans" or they are "pointing among themselves" (Greenwood 1). The author expresses, either way if they learned it or they are doing it themselves, this cognition shows their social skills are advancing. This helps us better understand elephants because it shows they have the potential to learn from humans throughout the years and observe our common tendencies.

Overall, conducting this research though the Academic Search engine has taught me how to look for credible and information that is useful to my work. It taught me to know what keywords to use in order to get accurate results and information. I think something valuable I learned about elephants throughout this activity is their intelligence is endless and limitless. They continue to shock us everyday with their ability to understand things that we humans understand too. It isn't to say that elephants are considered smart because they measure up to humans, but it is the fact that they have the brain capacity to perform and understand such actions.