This is the eye of Nong Paeng, a female elephant living at the sanctuary with her calf. She was quiet, smaller than the other female elephants in this herd & really gentle when extracting the sugar cane & bananas out of my pocket when I was distracted. I love taking photos of animal's eyes & have a rather large collection, to put on canvas & have in our house. They say that eye's are the windows to the soul after all.
Did you know that it is thought that elephants could be one of the most intelligent large land mammals? The size of their brain is a good indicator of this, weighing in at an average of 5kg's. Which is more brain to body mass ratio than any other large land mammal. To give you an idea of what this means, some of the largest whales have bodies 20x the size of an elephant, however, their brain is only double the mass of a typical elephant's. As well as size, an elephants brain has over 300 billion neurons and although it doesn't have the same amount of connectivity as a human brain, it's cortex has the same amount of neurons as a humans. We know elephants have a huge range of complex emotions such as compassion & grief, just to name two. Apart from humans, elephant's display very strong emotion's & ritual behaviour when confronted with the graves or bones of dead elephant's & appear to mourn. They have been seen burying dead elephant's & in a few rare cases have even buried dead humans. It has been documented on many occasions that elephants will come back to a family members grave every year while migrating & pay respects.
They have also shown the ability to mimic each other in comedic style & there has been a few documented cases of elephant's being able to mimic noises made from birds, machinery & even human words. They co-operate in large herds & communicate very well, some studies suggest they can communicate non verbally to each other & to us by pointing. Harry Preachey, an elephant trainer of 27 years said that elephant's understand the semantics and syntax of human words.
We also know that they have VERY BIG memories & will remember a person or place of trauma decades later. They use tools (something we thought only primates, dolphins & humans did) and really impressively they are self aware & pass the MSR test (Mirror Self Recognition).
Although they were never meant to hold a paint brush & paint for human amusement, a few discoveries have happened, when elephants weren't under pressure. They have the ability to paint object's & each other, as they see them, with their own unguided brush strokes.
We know they remember music, have favourite melodies & will even play these of their own accord. They also have a very well known ability to problem solve & there are many documented cases of elephant's distracting keepers or making sure the coast is clear, before undoing their shackles or locked gates to escape.
A study done in Tokyo proved that elephant's can solve arithmatic problems & keep count of numbers, the result's showed that on average they were 74% correct.
The more I learn about these gentle giants, the more there is to love & respect about them. I predict in our life time that humans will continue to learn a lot about animals & their intelligence, which will only make us humans look more stupid.
Did you know that it is thought that elephants could be one of the most intelligent large land mammals? The size of their brain is a good indicator of this, weighing in at an average of 5kg's. Which is more brain to body mass ratio than any other large land mammal. To give you an idea of what this means, some of the largest whales have bodies 20x the size of an elephant, however, their brain is only double the mass of a typical elephant's. As well as size, an elephants brain has over 300 billion neurons and although it doesn't have the same amount of connectivity as a human brain, it's cortex has the same amount of neurons as a humans. We know elephants have a huge range of complex emotions such as compassion & grief, just to name two. Apart from humans, elephant's display very strong emotion's & ritual behaviour when confronted with the graves or bones of dead elephant's & appear to mourn. They have been seen burying dead elephant's & in a few rare cases have even buried dead humans. It has been documented on many occasions that elephants will come back to a family members grave every year while migrating & pay respects.
They have also shown the ability to mimic each other in comedic style & there has been a few documented cases of elephant's being able to mimic noises made from birds, machinery & even human words. They co-operate in large herds & communicate very well, some studies suggest they can communicate non verbally to each other & to us by pointing. Harry Preachey, an elephant trainer of 27 years said that elephant's understand the semantics and syntax of human words.
We also know that they have VERY BIG memories & will remember a person or place of trauma decades later. They use tools (something we thought only primates, dolphins & humans did) and really impressively they are self aware & pass the MSR test (Mirror Self Recognition).
Although they were never meant to hold a paint brush & paint for human amusement, a few discoveries have happened, when elephants weren't under pressure. They have the ability to paint object's & each other, as they see them, with their own unguided brush strokes.
We know they remember music, have favourite melodies & will even play these of their own accord. They also have a very well known ability to problem solve & there are many documented cases of elephant's distracting keepers or making sure the coast is clear, before undoing their shackles or locked gates to escape.
A study done in Tokyo proved that elephant's can solve arithmatic problems & keep count of numbers, the result's showed that on average they were 74% correct.
The more I learn about these gentle giants, the more there is to love & respect about them. I predict in our life time that humans will continue to learn a lot about animals & their intelligence, which will only make us humans look more stupid.
Cheers to the future, respecting all creatures, great & small & science!
- Alli
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