Elephant Cognition

     Elephants are considered some of the smartest animals on the planet.  We have seen that they are able to learn socially, showcase emotions, and even teach their offspring thanks to their complex brains.  The human brain serves as a benchmark of intelligence and weighs around 3 lbs.  Elephants have one of the largest brains that weighs in at 11 lbs putting them in 2nd place only to sperm whales.

Image of Human, Pilot Whale, and Elephant brain size comparison. 

     The hippocampus is a brain area associated with emotion.  Elephants possess a much larger hippocampus by proportion that is linked to their closeness between herd members.  Their caring capacity has been noted in many observational and control settings.  Elephants are only separated by death and capture and have distinct rituals when mourning the loss of a family member.  Elephants are one of the only species that buries their dead by digging a hole and moving the body into the pit.  Researchers have noticed in some instances when a matriarch mother dies young calves make sounds that mimic crying.

     Elephants large capacity for intellect and emotion leads to a philosophical debate on whether it is ok to hunt them.  With many conservation efforts and protection agencies, elephant poaching has been decreasing over the past years but it is still up to us to ensure the survival of such an important species.


Sources: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition

Anti-Predatory Behavior

Elephants are a non-predatory species. They acquire their nutrition from eating vegetation (up to 375 pounds a day). However, being the largest land animal they are often under predatory attack. Carnivores (meat-eaters) such as lions, hyenas, and crocodiles prey upon young, sick, orphaned, or injured elephants. 

However, humans are the greatest predatory threat to elephants due to poaching for ivory. 

Elephants can defend against predators by using their immense body mass, large strong tusks, and overall brute force. When threatened they often "charge" their attacker usually ramming and stomping upon contact. Research shows the oldest matriarchs and those with most experience often take the role in leading the protection against predators attacking the younger smaller elephants. 

Common responses to a threat include an alert posture with the head raised, ears spread, tail raised, and trunk raised or turned to catch scent. Older bulls and matriarchs form a defense ring around the calves. Elephants will often perform a display of aggression in attempts to intimidate or scare of predators to avoid fighting. However if the predator does not back down, the elephant will proceed to perform a defensive attack.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/03/10/rspb.2011.0168.full

http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/elephants/longevity.htm

http://www.nature-wildlife.com/eletxt.htm

Elephants and Culture

As we’ve hopefully convinced you of by now, elephants are fascinating and majestic animals. They have many interesting characteristics, are intelligent and endearing, and can even be considered personable. They are massive in size, but also seemingly gentle in nature. Because of this, elephants are very prominent in pop culture, politics, and even religion. Here are only a few of the places elephants are found:

in Hinduism: 

The Hindu god, Ganesha, has the head of an elephant and the body of a boy. 

Elephants in the Lord of the Rings.

The elephant, Horton, plays the main role in a couple of Dr. Seuss books.

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Who can forget the lovable, Dumbo??

Tantor is featured in Tarzan .

Hathi in the Jungle Book 

The Republican Party symbol 

And last but not least... 

Water for Elephants, which features an intelligent and endearing elephant, Rosie.

Obviously, elephants are extremely prevalent in the world of pop-culture, politics and religion. Although there are sure to be many more examples, we thought these few would just help to exemplify their many roles in culture. 

Elephant Conservation

Elephants Conservation Status


     The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has created a listing protocol to establish an inventory of biological species. The ranking system incorporates colors and abbreviations to make the listing comprehensive and easily understandable. Starting with LC (least conerning) and moving to EX (extinct) the labeling provides an easy system for most people to understand where a given species lies.
   

     The redlist established by IUCN is a range of vulnerable, risk of extinction, and extreme risk of extinction. The two main species of elephant find themselves within the threatened portion of this bracket. The African elephant is marked at VU (vulnerable) while the Asian elephant is marked EN (endangered). The African elephant population was recorded to be around 10 million in 1900 and has dropped to about 600,000 in 1990. Likewise the Asian elephant population has been reduced to around 30,000-40,000 living members.

     There are several main contributing factors that have led to the dramatic reduction of the elephant population worldwide. Many Eastern countries place high value on ivory obtained from elephant tusks which has created a high demand that can only be satisfied by poaching elephants and removing their tusks once dead. Human population growth has led to deforestation and habitat reduction across much of the elephants original territory. Their migration paths have been blocked and fenced off leaving them with inadequate access to resources such as water and food. Unfortunately this restriction of land forces elephants into agricultural areas where they often fall victim to death by gunshots when farmers wish to protect their crops. They are also hunted by Africans that have unstable food supplies and rely on them to prevent starvation.

     There are many conservation agencies that are busy at work to rebuild the elephant population and prevent further destruction of habitat. The US has granted several million dollars toward elephant conservation in hopes of warding off extinction. The elephant population as a whole has seen an increase in number over the past decade thanks to these efforts and with growing support it is projected that they will slowly move down the IUCN red list in the future.




Sources:
http://www.elephantconservation.org/
http://www.fws.gov/international/DIC/pdf/Afe_fs.pdf
http://www.iucnredlist.org/

Empirical Study - "Elephants know when they need a helping trunk in a cooperative task"

A recent study from Frans B. M. de Waal et al. (2011) demonstrated the cognitive understanding to effectively to be aware and perform cooperative tasks in elephants. The researchers paired 12 elephants into 6 unique pairs to participate in a task that required coordinated pulling. This task was previously used to study cooperation in chimpanzees, requiring the involvement of two chimpanzees to lift a heavy weight by rope instead of only one chimpanzee. A single rope was threaded around the weight apparatus such that pulling on one end would only move the rope, not the weight, making the other end of the rope unavailable to the other partner. There were two conditions for this study: simultaneous release – where both elephants were released together from 10 meters back from the rope ends; and a delayed release – where one elephant would be released before the other, requiring a learning condition for the first elephant to wait for the second in order to perform the task correctly. This learning was taught by shaping procedures using consecutively longer intervals. All six elephants were highly successful in waiting for their partners across the 60 trials, and only increased in the longer delays after the first day, suggesting quickly learned contingency of the task regardless of the length of waiting time. The elephants inhibited their pulling response for delays up to 45 seconds, and learned that cooperation, the requirement of simultaneous pulling of the rope from both ends, was necessary to obtain the reward. These results provide ample demonstration of understanding cooperation. The researchers believe that through convergent evolutions, elephants may have reached a cooperative skill level equivalent to chimpanzees

http://0-www.pnas.org.sally.sandiego.edu/content/108/12/5116.full

Videos and Pictures of Elephants

(Sorry about the talking in the background!) 

This is a video and some pictures that I took of African Elephants while on a safari at the Aquila Reserve right outside of Cape Town, South Africa.




... And these are some more pictures that I took at the local San Diego Zoo! 

Elephant Reproductive Behavior

     As aforementioned in this blog, elephants are social animals. It is very common for females to live with each other, and with their offspring for the entirety of their lives. Furthermore, many female elephants (AKA cows) live with their daughters, and then their offspring. On the other hand, male elephants (AKA bulls) tend to branch off around the age of 12. They tend to live alone, or with a smaller number of other bulls.

     When it comes to mating, there is a very small amount of time (a few days) that the female elephants can become impregnated. This occurs around four times a year once the female is at sexual maturity, at around 12 years of age. Her readiness is signaled to the male elephants by an odor that she exudes, along with vocal calls. Male elephants also reach peak testosterone levels multiple times a year (known as being in musth). This is signaled to females by their urine, and also their vocal calls. Female elephants will almost always pick a male who is in musth over one that isn’t.

      Elephant mating is a mutual process. Once the two elephants determine that they are both physically ready to mate, the bull will begin to “flirt” with the cow. She will usually pay no attention to him for a few minutes. If she is not interested, she can get away seeing as cows are quicker than bulls. If she is interested, she will begin to reciprocate the flirting. This flirting is done mostly with the trunks. The elephants will intertwine their trunks, and may put their trunks in each others mouths. To mate, the elephants leave the herd to be alone. After mating (which only takes a few minutes), the elephants may stay together for up to two weeks and continue to display affectionate behaviors towards one another. It is not uncommon for same-sex bonding and sexual encounters to occur in elephants.

This is a picture I took in South Africa of elephants showing standard mating behaviors with their trunks.

     After a female is impregnated, her gestation period is around 22 months. As previously mentioned, elephants begin breeding around 12 years of age, which is when they become sexually mature. Female elephants reproduce every 4-9 years, and rarely have twins. When an elephant is ready to give birth, the other females in the herd will circle around her. The birthing process takes around 2 hours. After the birth of the newborns, the mother closely and tenderly cares for her offspring. The newborns remain in constant contact with their mothers for the first year of their lives, and continue to remain very near to them for the next eight years! When the young elephants reach sexual maturity, the males will go off on their own, whereas the females may remain near their mothers for 50 years. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Mating
http://nature-wildlife.com/eletxt.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4574022_elephants-mate.html