Posted on 10/14/2013 8:38:08 AM PDT by null and void
Elephants understand humans in a way most other animals don’t, according to the latest research from the University of St Andrews. The new study, published October 10, 2013 by Current Biology, found that elephants are the only wild animals to understand human pointing without any training to do so.
The researchers, Anna Smet and Professor Richard Byrne from the University’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, set out to test whether African elephants could learn to follow pointing — and were surprised to find them responding successfully from the first trial.
They said, “In our study we found that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so. This has shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates.”
Elephants are part of an ancient African radiation of animals, including the hyrax, golden mole, aardvark and manatee. Elephants share with humans an elaborate and complex living network in which support, empathy and help for others are critical for survival. The researchers say that it may be only in such a society that the ability to follow pointing has adaptive value.
Professor Byrne explained, “When people want to direct the attention of others, they will naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Pointing is the most immediate and direct way that humans have for controlling others’ attention.
“Most other animals do not point, nor do they understand pointing when others do it. Even our closest relatives, the great apes, typically fail to understand pointing when it’s done for them by human carers; in contrast, the domestic dog, adapted to working with humans over many thousands of years and sometimes selectively bred to follow pointing, is able to follow human pointing — a skill the dogs probably learn from repeated, one-to-one interactions with their owners.”
The St Andrews’ researchers worked with a group of elephants who give rides to tourists in Zimbabwe. The animals were trained to follow certain vocal commands, but they weren’t accustomed to pointing.
Anna Smet explained, “We always hoped that our elephant subjects — whose ‘day job’ is taking tourists for elephant-back rides near Victoria Falls — would be able to learn to follow human pointing.
“But what really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything. Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment.”
The researchers say that it is possible that elephants may do something akin to pointing as a means of communicating with each other, using their long trunk.
Anna continued, “Elephants do regularly make prominent trunk gestures, for instance when one individual detects the scent of a dangerous predator, but it remains to be seen whether those motions act in elephant society as ‘points.’”
The findings help explain how humans have been able to rely on wild-caught elephants as work animals, for logging, transport, or war, for thousands of years.
Professor Byrne explained, “It has long been a puzzle that one animal, the elephant, doesn’t seem to need domestication in order to learn to work effectively with humans. They have a natural capacity to interact with humans even though — unlike horses, dogs and camels — they have never been bred or domesticated for that role. Our findings suggest that elephants seem to understand us humans in a way most other animals don’t.”
And, as always, be afraid of Bad Juju.
Of the several Shelties family members have had, I knew one who would look where I was pointing, and another that would look at my finger.
Obliviously the work of a civilization barely out of the stone age. /s
Yes, it must of been engineers from Atlantis...or Mu..or...Hyperboria...or Middle Earth...or maybe Narnia...or:
And these stone age people were very well organized too!
We had four dogs at one time-—one of the dogs, a lab, dobie, spaniel, terrier mix watched and reacted to the TV and would obey the finger point. He was a lot human, even with expressions-we miss him awfully.
The other three of various and sundry mixes(papillon/terrier; beagle/corgi; lab/beagle/herder dog) just didn’t follow the finger pointing idea. The latter survives, but does not respond to us much...then again he’s getting up there in years.
People calculate stone placement rates for the Egyptian pyramids based on the “fact” that it must all have been done in 20 year, yet no one asserts that a medieval cathedral had to be built in 20 years.
Absolutely! Not only that, some of them will retrieve what you are pointing at!
Well I hope that GOP-”E” Elephant mascot knows which finger I’m holding up right now and remembers it.......
Yup. All my dogs look at my finger.
***
Are you sure you’re pointing correctly?
;-)
My dog would just look at my finger.
Yup.
And my Dobes will look where I’m looking if I say “What’s that?”.
If I then point in that direction, they tear off to see if something needs biting.
;D
I trained mine to eat, too.
Exactly.
I just recently read a science study demostrating this to be true.
I taught mine that old trick where you tell him a treat is poison and he looks at it till you tell it was really ok, and then he’s supposed to gobble it up.
Took about 2 minutes to teach him poison but for some reason I couldn’t teach him the signal that it was ok. So I picked up the biscuit and took a nibble and he gobbled it down.
So that was the trick from then on. He wouldn’t touch it till I proved it was ok by tasting it myself. Which made it a 10X better trick. I’m not sure if it was him or me who came up with the twist.
I think your dog trained you well. Did he show you off to his friends?
Let’s start that conversation by acknowledging we aren’t going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants... bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society. Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors. [but he’s not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
...by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war... We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue" ... the party needs to become more welcoming to individuals who disagree with basic Republican doctrine on emotional social issues such as gay marriage... "We're going to have to be a little hands off on some of these issues ... and get people into the party," Paul said.
See below when it went underwater.
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