Tool Use
Further information: Tool use by animals#ElephantsElephants show a remarkable ability to use tools, using their trunks like arms. Elephants have been observed digging holes to drink water and then ripping bark from a tree, chewing it into the shape of a ball, filling in the hole and covering over it with sand to avoid evaporation, then later going back to the spot for a drink. They also often use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves. Elephants have also been known to drop very large rocks onto an electric fence either to ruin the fence or to cut off the electricity.
Read more about this topic: Elephant Cognition
Famous quotes containing the word tool:
“Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)