Self-awareness
Asian Elephants have joined a small group of animals, including great apes, bottlenose dolphins and magpies, that exhibit self-awareness. The study was conducted with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) using elephants at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Although many animals will respond to a mirror, very few show any evidence that they recognize it is in fact themselves in the mirror reflection.
The Asian elephants in the study also displayed this type of behavior when standing in front of a 2.5 m-by-2.5 m mirror - they inspected the rear and brought food close to the mirror for consumption.
Evidence of elephant self awareness was shown when the elephant Happy repeatedly touched a painted X on her head with her trunk, a mark which could only be seen in the mirror. Happy ignored another mark made with colourless paint that was also on her forehead to ensure she was not merely reacting to a smell or feeling.
Frans De Waal, who ran the study, stated, "These parallels between humans and elephants suggest a convergent cognitive evolution possibly related to complex society and cooperation."
Joyce Poole, of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, Kenya, has demonstrated vocal learning and imitation in elephants of sounds made by each other and in the environment. She is beginning to research whether sounds made by elephants have dialects, a trait that is rare in the animal kingdom.
Read more about this topic: Elephant Cognition