Elephant Sense and Sensibility

by Michael Garstang

  extraordinary abilities of animals to perform feats of communication that we as

  humans might find difficult to achieve or even fully comprehend.

  Chapter 11

  Intelligence

  Earlier we defined intelligence as the “capacity to meet new and unforeseen

  situations by rapid and effective adjustment of behavior.” While this definition

  may serve to characterize intelligence, the challenge is how do you apply this

  definition to an elephant and, as important, how do you evaluate the result? It

  is difficult to determine what constitutes intelligence or intelligent behavior

  without using human behavior as the standard (Byrne, 2006). The ability of

  elephants to recognize and remember some 100 other individuals is not only

  a mental feat that may not be matched by all humans but that recognition

  by elephants is not the product of sight but of sound and enhanced by other

  senses such as smell and touch. It is very likely that if humans were asked

  to demonstrate their ability to recognize by sight more than 100 individuals

  whom they have identified by sound, the result may fall far short of what

  elephants can do.

  We are faced with the additional problem of deciding the level of intelli-

  gence involved in learning and the role that learning plays in any mental exer-

  cise. The definition we quoted above attempts to eliminate the role of learning

  by specifying that intelligence is the “capacity to meet new and unforeseen

  situations” and to solve the potential problem by “rapid and effective adjust-

  ment of behavior.” But if, as we have argued earlier, the brain has evolved

  over evolutionary time to promote survival by adapting to the challenges of the

  environment and to retain in its unconscious those strategies that have worked,

  then how do we know that the problem that is designed to test the elephant’s

  intelligence is, first, “new” and, second, of any relevance to the elephant? If

  instead intelligence is the product of an infinite number of successful experi-

  ments, determined over evolutionary time as a result of trial and error, then

  there is no moment of discovery or capacity to meet a “new situation.” If most

  of what we do and what an elephant does is embedded in the unconscious and

  called upon by the conscious to act in any given situation, then it is not possible

  to determine either what is “new and unforeseen” or what meets these demands

  for an elephant. While knowledge is stored in the unconscious and is manifest

  in behavior such as using the trunk to feed, that knowledge was initially con-

  sciously learned before being stored in the unconscious. It would seem that

  careful observation of elephant behavior under natural conditions would more

  likely yield evidence of intelligent behavior.

  Elephant Sense and Sensibility. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-802217-7.00011-9

  Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  79

  80 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  Elephants can locate the source of sound with considerable accuracy. As

  discussed in Chapter 9, one elephant can locate another by its call to a 1°

  accuracy in azimuth at a distance of 2 km or greater. When hearing the ap-

  proach of other elephants, again at distances of 2 km or greater, elephants will

  frequently stand facing the direction of the oncoming elephants, with their

  heads raised and the ears widespread. At other times, often with the approach

  of a predator or even a much smaller animal such as a tortoise, an elephant

  will straighten and point with its trunk. Prior to flight in a “fight-or-flight”

  situation, the elephant that decides to flee points with its trunk the direction

  it will take.

  Smet and Byrne (2013) have recently demonstrated that African elephants,

  trained to take tourists for rides, were able to follow humans pointing at food

  in a container with an accuracy of 68%. One-year-old children only do slightly

  better at an average of 73% of the time. The elephants Smet and Byrne worked

  with were never trained and in their previous routines were never exposed to

  pointing by their handlers. In fact, they performed at the above level from the

  beginning of the experiment and did not improve over the course of the experi-

  ment. This suggests that the elephants were making use of an inherent ability

  and not an acquired one.

  When the experimenters only used subtle movement of the head and eyes to

  indicate which of the vessels contained food, the elephants failed to respond. As

  in the case of the mirror test (Chapter 8), it is surprising that elephants with poor

  eyesight and heavy reliance upon sound and smell are able to respond to visual

  cues. Conversely, it is not surprising that they probably failed to detect subtle

  head and eye movement as cues to locate the food.

  Hutto ( Illumination in the Flatwoods, 2006, p. 110) records that the young

  wild turkeys he guided through the flatwoods of the northern Gulf coast of

  Florida would respond to his pointing at an object or insect and readily know

  where to look for the object.

  Plotnik and colleagues (2011) reworked a classic 1930s experiment used on

  primates to subject 12 male and female Asian elephants at the Thai Elephant

  Conservation Center in Lampang, Thailand, to a challenging situation that none

  of the elephants involved had previously encountered. A sliding table holding

  bowls of corn was separated from the elephants by a transverse net. The table

  had to be approached down two lanes, which led to the ends of ropes attached

  to the sliding table. However, both ropes had to be pulled toward the net for

  the sliding table to advance, bringing the bowls of corn within the reach of

  the elephants. If only one rope was pulled, it would simply slide through two

  rings without moving the table. The elephants quickly learned that the task had

  to be coordinated. They would wait up to 45 s for a partner to show up. Two

  elephants, Neua Un and Jo Jo, learned that it was not necessary for both of them

  to pull on the rope. Neua Un simply stood on her end of the rope and allowed Jo

  Jo to do the pulling. Furthermore, Jo Jo would not even walk up to the net unless

  his partner was released to join him.

  Intelligence Chapter | 11 81

  This test not only involved comprehension of relatively complex mechan-

  ics but required coordination between two individuals. As constructed, the task

  could not be completed by a single individual. Once recognized, individuals did

  not attempt to complete the task on their own but waited for help. In this experi-

  ment the elephants went beyond their human task masters, finding a solution

  that the humans had not thought of by one elephant standing on the rope.

  Holdrege (2001) recounts an incident in India that illustrates both learning

  as well as response to an unexpected situation. A work elephant had been taught

  to pull a tall pole from a truck that the mahout and elephant were following and

  place the pole upright in a previously prepared hole. The process proceeded

  down the line of holes until the elephant refused to lower the pole from midair

  above the next hole. The mahout got down from the elephant to find a dog sleep-

  ing
in the bottom of the hole. Not until the dog was chased out of the hole would

  the elephant lower the pole into it. Two levels of intelligence are evident in this

  account. First, that the elephant is capable of learning and performing a task—

  the planting of the poles—and, second, that the elephant was aware of what he

  or she was doing. It was not acting purely by rote but perceived that with the

  unexpected presence of the dog at the bottom of the hole, something bad was

  likely to happen and that to avoid this, the elephant had to disobey commands

  it had been following.

  Poole and Granli (2004) have examined elephants less than 7 years old at

  play. At this age the behavioral repertoire of elephants is still developing. For

  example, they have yet to master the use of their trunk, which at this early stage

  is seen as a rather useless appendage that is often in the way (even stepped

  upon). Play may even imply cognitive recognition between reality and pretense.

  They identified five categories of calf play that promoted motor skills, especially

  with the trunk, and social skills that included rules and procedures in attaining

  and maintaining rank and dominance. Extensive use of vocalization in play

  developed later communication skills. Poole and Granli noted that elephants

  engage in what can only be termed as absurd, even preposterous, solitary play.

  In this kind of play there were many instances noted of “pure expressions of joy,

  of fun and clowning around.” Such lone performances may be examples of self-

  awareness in elephants. Collective play in groups, especially in water, promotes

  social skills and sociability. Playing in water involves a lot of body contact and

  close-quarter play (Figure 11.1).

  Elephants frequently dig for water in dry stream beds in the dry season.

  Both personal experience and that of Payne (personal communication, 1995)

  suggest that elephants (usually the matriarch or an older adult female) seldom

  dig for water without finding it. Furthermore, they locate water at a depth of

  no more than about 1 m (3 ft). Digging in a sandy, dry riverbed, they scoop

  the sand out with a front foot, cupping the foot to make a scoop. They do not

  use their trunks in this digging operation. In many instances, water seeping into

  the hole will take a number of minutes to accumulate and clarify. Members of the

  herd will patiently wait their turn to drink, taking care not to collapse the hole,

  82 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  FIGURE 11.1 Young elephants show an infinite variety of play from solitary to group play, involving running, mock charging of bushes and birds, great joy in water, and sometimes boisterous play that needs to be controlled by adults.

  and will prevent and even assist young to drink from the hole (see Chapter 6).

  Elephants have been seen to cover up these artificial waterholes with vegeta-

  tion, preventing other animals from getting to the hole. When not protected

  in this way, other animals, particularly Cape buffalo, wildebeest, and zebra,

  quickly collapse and destroy the hole, often before a single animal has had the

  opportunity to drink.

  In at least one case reported by Holdrege (2001), an elephant, after digging

  a hole in a sandy river bed to reach water, stripped bark from a nearby tree,

  chewed it into a large ball, used the ball to plug the hole, and covered it with

  sand. Later, this elephant was observed to return to the covered hole, remove the

  sand and plug, and drink from the hole. The level of cognitive comprehension

  in this case is remarkable. Not only must the elephant recognize why the hole

  needs protection, presumably gained from previous experience, but he uses his

  tusks as tools to manufacture a device to protect the source of water that he has

  created and recognizes further that the protective device itself must be disguised

  for his efforts to succeed. Whether or not these actions are interpreted in the

  terms presented above cannot detract from the actual events that took place.

  In a situation analogous to the account of sharing a small source of water

  described earlier, a BBC film crew (17 March 2011) waiting at a stagnant water

  hole for the annual flood to arrive in the Okavango, observed similar appar-

  ently carefully considered behavior. The shallow water, only inches deep, cov-

  ered a thick layer of mud and sediment. Any disturbance would sully the water,

  making it unpalatable or even undrinkable. The filmmakers, like in the Wanki

  case (see Chapter 12), anticipated that the approaching elephants, traveling in

  Intelligence Chapter | 11 83

  temperatures still near 50 °C (122 °F) after probably 24 h without water, would

  rush into the water and destroy the precious source. Instead, the lead elephants

  slowed the pace, approaching quietly and stepping into the pool carefully mak-

  ing as little disturbance as possible; each elephant, one after another, “began to

  carefully sweep their trunk tips across the surface, delicately siphoning the few

  centimeters of clear liquid from the mud below.”

  As before, the behavior exhibited by a group of animals ranging in age from

  adults to calves suggests considerable exercise of knowledge, control, and disci-

  pline. One would presume that experienced adults or at least the matriarch of the

  herd would know from experience that to avail themselves of drinkable water

  they had to, as a group, behave in the manner observed. Under normal circum-

  stances elephants at a water hole will typically quite violently disturb the water.

  In this case, however, they apparently recognized that this would not be appro-

  priate. Instead, they adopted a completely different behavior. Such a change in

  behavior implies considerable neural processing including the requirement that

  such change in behavior had to be communicated to the entire herd.

  Elephants are fully aware of an electric fence and in Etosha (Conrad Brain,

  personal communication, 1999) seem to know when the fence is on or off. While

  the solenoids in the electric fence control box emit quite loud clicks when the

  fence is on, these clicks cannot be heard over long distances away from the box.

  Elephants nevertheless detect whether the fence is on or not. Whether they do

  this by detecting the electric field or touching vegetation is not known.

  When the electric fence is on, elephants have been seen to break sizable tree

  limbs or branches, which they have then thrown onto the fence and effectively

  disabled the fence by shorting it to the ground. Larger females have been seen to

  push younger elephants into the fence to achieve the same ends. Alternatively,

  a mother elephant was seen to twist the conducting wire around her tusk and

  break it to let her calf through. In the first instance, the tree limbs are being

  effectively used as tools to disable the electric fence. In the second instance, an-

  other elephant is employed as perhaps the only, if not the most readily, available

  tool. Likewise, the tusk is being employed as a tool.

  Hot chilies have been used as a barrier to protect crops from elephants in var-

  ious locations. As reported by Edwin Mbulo ( Sunday Post Online, 29 January

  2012), elephants in the Mandia region along the Zambezi River soon learned

  to deal with the chili barrier
. Cloth strips were soaked in chili extract and hung

  around the perimeter fences of the crops the villagers wished to protect from the

  elephant raiders. The elephants not only used branches to throw onto the fences

  and bring down the chili strips, but walked backward across the downed barrier,

  presumably to avoid getting chili on sensitive trunk tips, eyes, and mouth.

  Anthony and Spence in their book The Elephant Whisperer (2009, p. 242)

  relates the capture of 12 Nyala antelope ( Tragelaphus angasi) (Figure 11.2).

  The male Nyala are a beautiful black, golden brown, and white striped ante-

  lope with 30-in. lyre-shaped horns, weighing in at between 250 and 300 lbs and

  standing nearly 1.3 m (4 ft) at the shoulder. The females are smaller, golden

  84 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  FIGURE 11.2 Family of Nyala ( Tragelaphus angasi) with one male and four females. Photograph courtesy of author.

  brown with vertical white stripes, and no horns. The species has been decimated

  everywhere in South Africa except the Natal region where Anthony’s “Thula

  Thula” game farm was located. He had set up a capture of Nyala for transloca-

  tion to one of their old habitats. The capture had been successful and 12 Nyala

  were safely fenced in an impregnable thorn bush boma. The capture team was

  seated around their campfire next to the boma enjoying their last night of a suc-

  cessful capture operation. Then they heard the sound of Thula Thula’s herd of

  elephants led by the matriarch Nana. The team gave way thinking that the el-

  ephants had been attracted by the smell of the bales of alfalfa that they had been

  using to feed the Nyala. Clearly, if the elephants wanted the alfalfa they could

  have it. Instead, the herd stopped as if on instruction. Nana walked deliberately

  and alone to the boma gate, which was not locked but secured only by closing

  the hasps on the u-bolts. She manipulated the hasps with the tip of her trunk,

  first getting one then the other open. Then with her trunk she pulled the gate

  open, stood aside, and waited. After a few seconds the Nyala responded, found

  the opening, and were gone. As the last Nyala disappeared, Nana went back to

  the herd and led them away. They showed no interest in the alfalfa, leaving this