Elephant Sense and Sensibility

by Michael Garstang

  prime delicacy untouched.

  Nana was once a captive elephant herself penned in a boma. She had been

  translocated from near the Kruger National Park to Thula Thula. Whether her

  past influenced her behavior or not, there is little doubt that she was aware of

  the capture operation, which had used helicopters to round up the Nyala. She

  would have memories of such events. She was also no doubt aware of the dis-

  tress calls of the Nyala both during capture and after they were penned up in

  Intelligence Chapter | 11 85

  the boma. Not only was this an act of empathy and altruism on the part of Nana

  on behalf of another species, but it involved a number of intelligent actions that

  would qualify under the definition given earlier. It is also of note that both Nana

  and her herd would have been fully aware of the proximity of humans, their

  fire, sounds, and pervasive scent. These signals of potential danger were totally

  ignored and the whole operation carried out without any apparent reaction to the

  presence of humans.

  Elephants have been credited with making tools (Byrne and Bates, 2011b).

  They use branches to scratch and remove parasites (ticks) from places on their

  body that are difficult to reach by using scratching posts or old termite mounds.

  They will even use probes made of small branches to delicately penetrate the

  temporal gland or the ear orifice. Elephants will spray water over their whole

  bodies and then blow dust onto the wet skin surfaces (Figure 11.3). Alternatively, they will wallow in mudholes or spray a slurry of mud over their bodies. They

  will consciously and with considerable vigor stir up the mud to make this slurry.

  In either event, the mud will dry, protecting them from the sun, potentially cool-

  ing them and encasing parasites. By rubbing or scratching the caked mud, para-

  sites will be removed (Figure 11.4). Elephants frequently have a favorite stump or old termite mound, which everyone uses as a scratching post. Hard-to-reach

  places or cracks and folds in their thick skin, not accessible using a scratching

  post, are reached with sticks that are broken at the appropriate length. They will

  go through a trial-and-error routine to arrive at a tool that will do the job at hand.

  Elephants will also use branches with leaves or fonds as fans to cool them-

  selves during the very hot periods of the day. Elephants recognize foreign ob-

  jects such as tranquilizing darts on others and remove them, even wiping injuries

  FIGURE 11.3 Termite mounds, consisting of fine-grained soil processed by the termites, will be tusked up and converted into dust, which will then be blown over their previously wetted bodies.

  86 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  FIGURE 11.4 Dusting at a waterhole.

  with clumps of grass manipulated with their trunks. Using sticks to get to food

  that is out of reach, piling vegetation to block access, or waving branches at

  vehicles to repel them, including throwing missiles with considerable accuracy

  and force, are all within their repertoire of using tools.

  Water is stored in the pharangeal pouch of the larynx. Elephants will reach

  down into this pouch with their trunks and selectively wet their ears to induce

  added evaporative cooling under extreme conditions of heat. They will also use

  their tusks as tools to dig minerals from soil banks or as levers to break grass and

  other vegetation. Tusks will be used to pry bark lose from trees, which is then

  stripped off the tree with the trunk.

  They have also been known to spray both keepers and spectators with

  water. This has occurred in the wild where Ranger Louis Olivier encountered a

  bull elephant drinking in the Nwaswitsontso River in the Kruger National Park

  (Roderigues, The Game Rangers, 1992, pp. 38–39). An adult elephant can hold

  some 8–10 l (2–2.5 gal) of water in its trunk. In this instance, the elephant de-

  liberately filled its trunk with water and, employing subtle tactics of deception

  pretending that it was not aware of Olivier’s presence, came within three paces

  of him, then let him have it with a full blast from the straightened trunk pointed

  directly at him.

  Bates and colleagues (2007) used three identical red cloths in Amboseli,

  Kenya, differing only in smell. One cloth was impregnated with smells from

  Maasai warriors, one with smells from Kamba agriculturists, and the remain-

  ing cloth was left odor-free. The Maasai, whose land is encompassed in the

  Amboseli Game Reserve and who graze their animal herds in the park, not

  Intelligence Chapter | 11 87

  infrequently clash with the resident elephants. Under drought conditions, water

  and food resources diminish and clashes including spearing of elephants occur.

  The elephant herds in Amboseli are thus wary of the Maasai and will respond

  to them by flight and occasionally aggression. The Kamba are agriculturists and

  live in relative harmony with the Amboseli elephants. The elephants show no

  fear of the Kamba.

  When Bates and her colleagues displayed the three cloths to these elephants,

  only the red cloth impregnated with the odor of the Maasai triggered fear and

  flight. The other two red cloths were ignored. The experiment was repeated

  with two clean cloths, one white and one red. The elephants reacted only to

  the red cloth, showing both fear (flight) and aggression. These reactions of the

  Amboseli elephants show that they were able to subdivide another species into

  two classes, demonstrating sophisticated discriminatory and classification abili-

  ties based on both smell and sight.

  Reports of the early use of aircraft in Kenya to selectively hunt elephants

  with large tusks suggested that these elephants soon learned to recognize air-

  craft as dangerous and reacted by disappearing into forested areas. In recent

  times, many elephants have been translocated after being subjected to traumatic

  capture and transport. These elephants, often raised without any normal social

  interaction with other elephants, do not always exhibit obvious abhorrent behav-

  ior as described earlier for the Pilanesberg young males. Instead, however, there

  is evidence of distrust or even dislike of humans. In Hluhluwe Game Reserve

  in KwaZulu-Natal where such translocation of elephants has taken place, ele-

  phants have attacked visitors in cars, displaying possible guile where one group

  has blocked the road while another group has circled back through the bush and

  attacked the cars at the end of the stopped line of vehicles.

  Social interactions such as described earlier require the knowledge of indi-

  vidual identities and considerable use of cognitive powers. In addition to us-

  ing sound and communication to identify their own species at distances well

  removed from themselves, elephants have been shown to use olfactory cues to

  identify others. Results from experiments conducted in Amboseli National Park

  in Kenya by Bates and her colleagues (2008b) were able to show that elephants

  can probably keep track of all of the individuals in a group of as many as 17

  elephants. They know where each individual is and can keep track of where

  these individuals are going, as well as their previous locations. While other cues

  may also be used, such as sound, Bates could show that smell a
lone provided

  the needed information.

  Similarly, African elephants have been shown to form clear coalitions and

  alliances that involve reciprocity and cooperation (Byrne and Bates, 2009).

  Elephants will attempt to help those that they perceive as being in distress.

  When elephants have been tranquilized for various reasons, it is often dif-

  ficult to prevent others in the family group from coming to the assistance of

  the darted animal, some attacking and chasing away human team members,

  others trying to assist the elephant that is down by raising it with their tusks

  88 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  and trunks. They are clearly aware of unusual circumstances and that indi-

  viduals are in distress. While their actions under these circumstances have

  been observed many times, their vocal response has not been recorded and

  examined. It is likely that vocalization under such circumstances ranges over

  a wide band of frequencies, significant parts of which are in the infrasonic

  range below the threshold of human hearing.

  Elephants detect, have knowledge of, and react to a wide range of abiotic

  sounds such as helicopter rotor noise, gunfire, vehicles, aircraft, seismic noise,

  and other possible sources of infrasound such as low-frequency sounds gener-

  ated by thunderstorms.

  In an exercise near the Okaukuejo Tourist Camp in the Etosha National Park

  (ENP) in Namibia where rifle fire occurred about 5 km (3 mile) from the camp,

  a herd of elephants led by a matriarch had been drinking at the camp waterhole.

  Just before the gunfire occurred (not audible to humans at the waterhole), the

  matriarch had given the “let’s go” rumble and started to lead the herd off in a

  direction toward the gunfire. At the time of the gunfire, she stopped the herd

  and returned them to the waterhole. The herd, having drunk their fill as well as

  bathed, were confused by the matriarch’s action, but she held them there milling

  around, undecided what to do. A while after the gunfire had ceased, she once

  again signaled to go and led the herd in the opposite direction from her original

  proposed course.

  Elephants in the Etosha National Park are subject to anthrax, which is en-

  demic to the area (Conrad Brain, personal communication, 1999). Mortality

  from anthrax is thought to keep elephant numbers in check in the park, alleviat-

  ing the need for other methods of population control. Only one culling operation

  has ever been conducted in the ENP so that elephants in the park are not familiar

  with gunfire. Yet this matriarch recognized these sounds from 5 km (3 mile)

  away, knew them to represent danger, and took avoiding action.

  Other than humans, lions and hyenas are the only predators that pose a threat

  to elephants. It takes a group of perhaps 10 or more female lions or hyenas to suc-

  cessfully kill an elephant that is part of a herd. Male lions, weighing over 400 lbs

  each and twice as heavy as females, are powerful enough to single-handedly kill

  an elephant. More typically two full-grown male lions will work in tandem to

  bring an elephant down. Although those tuned to the African bush are capable

  of distinguishing between the roars of male and female lions, it has taken re-

  searchers until recently to develop technology that can make such a distinction.

  McComb and colleagues (McComb et al., 2011), using recordings of male and

  female roars together with computer software, were able to show distinct differ-

  ences between male and female lion roars. When recorded lion roars from one

  to three males or separately from groups of female lions were played to some 39

  groups of elephants at Amboseli National Park in Kenya, they were able to show

  that elephants responded most strongly to the near simultaneous roars of three

  male lions, less so to a single male roaring, and significantly less to the roars of

  the lionesses. Furthermore, it was the older (60 years or more) matriarchs who

  Intelligence Chapter | 11 89

  showed the most response not only in reacting herself but in drawing the herd

  into defensive posture or acting quickly and aggressively to the perceived threat.

  The older matriarchs made clear distinctions in their reactions to the roars of the

  males versus the females, demonstrating the ability to discern between different

  known levels of danger. These findings reinforce earlier descriptions of older

  matriarchs carrying accumulated knowledge and cognitive ability to interpret

  threats to their herds and take actions to offset these threats. The author, seated

  in an open Land Rover, experienced the roaring of two large male lions lying in

  the grass no more than 3 m (10 ft) away. The sound-pressure level of these roars

  was sufficient to cause the sheet metal panels of the vehicle to vibrate. An esti-

  mate of the loudness of these calls was that they were close to 120 dB. Garstang

  et al. (1995), reporting on observations made by Stander and Stander (1988),

  pointed out that lions roar almost exclusively at night and most often near sunset

  and dawn when the strength of nocturnal inversions is greatest and the sound of

  such roars can probably be heard by other lions over distances of at least 10 km

  (6 mile) or an area of over 300 km2 (118 mile2).

  Navigation and the elephant’s detailed spatial knowledge over wide geo-

  graphic areas not only include the ability to remember specific locations but

  have a sense of time such that a specific location is visited only when the food

  located there is ripe. There is further evidence that elephants will adjust the tim-

  ing of their visits to such locations based on what the weather has been. Further

  evidence, described earlier, suggests not only that elephants can detect infra-

  sound generated by thunderstorms but that they know that these sounds mean

  water and potentially food. They may also have a sense of the drainage patterns

  of the terrain, and know that rain in catchment areas of ephemeral rivers means

  water downstream in what have been dry riverbeds over months if not years. In

  response, they do not expend energy ascending into the catchment region where

  the rain occurred but head to the nearest downstream location of the dry river

  channel to await the pending flood.

  Behavioral responses of the African honey badger or ratel ( Mellivora capen-

  sis), a species unrelated to the elephant, may help penetrate the enigma of ani-

  mal intelligence.

  The ratel, in common with the elephant, spends an extended period of time

  under the tutelage of its mother. Researchers have only recently discovered that

  what were thought to be badger pairs were, in fact, the mother and her offspring,

  staying together for as much as 2 years (BBC Nature, PBS, June 2014, http://

  youtu.be/c36UNSoJenI). Such extended mother–offspring contact suggests the need for significant learning, compounding the issue of distinguishing between

  learning and intelligence.

  At his rehabilitation facility on the western edge of the Kruger National

  Park in South Africa, Bryan Jones has developed great respect for what he un-

  questionably believes to be the intelligence of the honey badger (PBS Nature,

  June 2014). A particular badger named Stoffel by Jones proved to be an incor-

>   rigible escape artist. Jones eventually decided to build a 6-ft-high concrete wall

  90 Elephant Sense and Sensibility

  surrounding Stoffel’s enclosure. Stoffel escaped from this prison the very first

  night by climbing a tree near the wall and bending the branch he was on to

  meet the wall. Jones removed all the trees near the walls of the enclosure, only

  to find Stoffel breaking a branch from a remaining tree, dragging it to a corner,

  propping it up, and climbing out.

  All trees in the enclosure were then removed, only to find that Stoffel dug

  up stones in the enclosure and piled them in the corner and once again outwit-

  ted Jones and escaped. Removing the stones, Jones left a rake and shovel in the

  enclosure. On successive nights Stoffel used first the rake and then the spade

  propped up in the corner as a means to escape. Recall that the adult honey

  badger weighs in at about 25 lbs, is a stocky animal with short legs and very

  strong claws, standing about 25 cm (10 in.) at the shoulder with a body length

  of about 46 cm (18 in.). He is not designed to carry or drag long objects such

  as branches or garden tools nor to carry rocks. Incidently, when all rocks were

  moved, Stoffel used the dug-up ground and available trough of water to make

  mud balls, which he then piled in the corner in place of the rocks. The point of

  this story is to emphasize the fact that when an animal is faced with a problem

  not of our creation or design but confronting him or her, the intelligence dis-

  played is remarkable.

  Elephants in their natural environment have faced and solved innumerable

  problems of which we, as modern humans, have little knowledge or perception.

  Chapter 12

  Learning and Teaching

  How much animals learn, how much of their behavior is instinctual, and how

  much of this learning is by imitation remains controversial. There is no con-

  sensus among neuropsychologists and others that any animal, including nonhu-

  man primates, are able to teach or learn through explicit instruction (Caro and

  Hauser, 1992; Thornton and Raihani, 2008). We have suggested that a large

  part of human behavior, perhaps as much as 90%, is controlled by the uncon-

  scious, leaving only 10% in the conscious realm. Yet we conceded that at some