Amazing stuff! How intelligent are elephants?
"For elephants, communication is a complicated affair. These massive mammals bellow, trumpet, and rumble at frequencies we humans can’t hear. They detect one another’s seismic waves, touch each other with their trunks, and secrete chemicals from specialized glands. They even address each other with specific, name-like calls and combine visual signals—such as ear-flapping, trunk-swinging, and tail-waggling—with vocalizations when greeting in the wild.
Researchers haven’t confirmed, however, whether these prodigious pachyderms use their gestures to deliberately communicate what they want—a type of behavior known as goal-directed intentionality, which has previously only been observed in primates.
To find out, the authors of a new study presented semi-captive African savannah elephants with two trays: one empty, the other full of apples. The animals ended up using a wide range of gestures , which they only performed when an experimenter was present and looking at them; the animals repeated and elaborated their movements when they failed to receive the desired treats. ..."
From the abstract:
"A crucial feature of language is the ability to communicate cognitive goals to a specific audience, i.e. goal-directed intentionality. Core criteria for this ability include
(i) audience directedness: signalling in the presence of an attentive audience,
(ii) persistence: continuing signalling until goals are met, and
(iii) elaboration: using new signals following communicative failure.
While intentional use has been demonstrated in individual gestures in some non-primates, primates—in particular apes—show this ability across many gestures. But is goal-directed intentionality across many gestures restricted to primates?
We explored whether savannah elephants use many gestures with goal-directed intentionality. We presented semi-captive elephants with desired and non-desired items, recording their communicative attempts when an experimenter met, partially met or failed to meet their goal of getting the desired item.
Elephants used 38 gesture types almost exclusively when a visually attentive experimenter was present, demonstrating audience directedness.
They persisted in gesturing more when their goal was partially as compared with fully met but showed no difference in persistence when the goal was met or not met.
Elephants elaborated their gesturing when their goal was not met. We find goal-directed intentionality across many elephant gestures and reveal that elephants, like apes, assess the communicative effectiveness of their gesturing."
Elephants gesture to signal what they want—just like us "New experiments show elephants use a wide range of movements to express their desires"
No comments:
Post a Comment