Richard Collins: Does an elephant's big brain help them with problem-solving?
Sarah Jacobson et al. Innovating to solve a novel puzzle: wild Asian elephants vary in their ability to problem solve. Animal Behaviour. 2023
The elephant has the largest brain of any land mammal. Its ‘grey matter’ — crucial to thinking and problem-solving — is also more extensive. Impressive mental feats, therefore, might be expected of such a beast.
However, in a paper published in 2007, Benjamin Hart and colleagues claimed that the elephant’s performance in tests of cognition and tool-use "is unimpressive compared to the performance of chimpanzees and ourselves". They also note that "the neurons of the cervical cortex of elephants are much less densely packed than those of chimpanzees". As the elephant’s school report might say, this pupil ‘could do better’.
To perform well in exams you need a good memory, and an elephant, famously, ‘never forgets’. Indeed, some have shown extraordinary powers of recall. If her herd runs low on salt, a Kenyan matriarch marches her troop to Mount Elgon on the Ugandan border. There, she leads her charges 150metres into the darkness of Kitum Cave, where salt is abundant. She may not have visited the extinct volcano in years, or even decades, but she remembers being taken there by Granny long ago.
5/6 Elephants varied in how they interacted with the puzzle and # of doors opened. Regression analysis showed that ⬆️persistence & ⬆️EDS led to more innovation. The location of the boxes was associated with the expression of these behaviors, but not with innovation#AnimBehav2023 pic.twitter.com/bKqf57JgCf
— Sarah L Jacobson (@SarahLJacobson1) January 19, 2023
That elephants are intrigued by death is not an old wives’ tale. Jumbo will examine a carcass he finds, sniffing the remains, despite the stink of decay. If the death is recent, he may try to raise the corpse and get the deceased back on its feet. Some elephants visit a carcass repeatedly, touching and lifting the sun-bleached bones. Dead elephants really are ‘the faithful departed’.
Does all this indicate what psychologists call ‘a theory of mind’? If so, how bright are elephants and how well-equipped mentally are they to adapt to an environment deteriorating relentlessly due to climate-change poaching and persecution?
Elephant cognition has been studied in zoos but not in the wild. Now, psychologist Sarah Jacobson, and colleagues at the City University New York, have examined problem-solving abilities among wild elephants at the Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. Her team set up ‘puzzle boxes’, containing highly-aromatic jackfruit — food which Asian elephants find irresistible. Motion-sensitive cameras recorded the responses of elephants to the boxes.
There were three different box configurations. Access to one box could be gained by pulling a chain which opened a door. Another could be opened by pushing the door inwards. The third box had a sliding door.
Of 77 elephants that approached the puzzle boxes, 30 interacted with them on the first encounter. Forty-four did so at some stage during the experiment. Persistence paid off — those which tried to access the food repeatedly and tenaciously were most successful at opening the boxes. Eleven elephants manged to open one box, eight opened two, while five accessed all three.
The researchers conclude that "individuals varied widely in their success opening doors of the puzzle boxes" and "we did not see evidence of learning to open specific door types over time".
Although no aspiring Nobel laureates were identified among the elephants, being able to open boxes isn’t everything; they may excel at other tasks. Even Einstein, they say, didn't shine as a child!
