Study: Elephants Have Learned To Tell Certain Languages Apart 62
sciencehabit writes "Whether we realize it, African elephants are listening to us. The pachyderms can tell certain human languages apart and even determine our gender, relative age, and whether we're a threat, according to a new study. The work illustrates how elephants can sometimes protect themselves from human actions. The work may be helpful in preventing 'human-elephant conflicts where the species co-exist,' says Joshua Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at Mahidol University, Kanchanaburi, in Thailand. For instance, elephants might be deterred from entering farmland or encouraged to stick to the corridors designed for their use. 'The trouble is elephants are too smart to be fooled by us for long.'"
I, for one... (Score:2, Insightful)
... welcome our new pachyderm overlords!
My cats know when I'm up to something. (Score:3)
Sure, they're nowhere near as smart as elephants, but my cats generally know when I'm up to something, whether that's something that could be used to talk me into giving them treats, or something that might get them locked up into the bathroom and maybe shoved in a box and taken to the vet. One of my cats is better at figuring out treats, and usually pretty dumb about being herded somewhere, while the other one's better at figuring out potential bad stuff, but most cats have at least some clue.
How fine is this distinction? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would expect that they're either keying off certain words, or that they're going off phonology (the sounds that are used in a language). It might be a good follow-up study to figure out what method they use to make this distinction (TFA does not say, and the paper is paywalled).
I also wonder how fine a distinction between languages they can make. How close are the Kamba and Maasai languages? If they're relatively distant (like, say, English and Maasai), how do they deal with closer languages (like English and German, or even Spanish and Portuguese)? Are they able to distinguish accents?
Re:How fine is this distinction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How fine is this distinction? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they do it a completely different way than humans, that's even better because it tells us there's more than one way to do it. Perhaps their way works better given some constraint - a constraint that might be similar to an artificial intelligence's?
Re:How fine is this distinction? (Score:4, Insightful)
When we were little more than barely civilized, our insecurities probably collectively led us to this massive overcompensation that skewed our judgement of the other mammals' intelligence.
We are now, he said hopefully, so much beyond that infantile assumption that we may one fine day be caught saying, "You are welcome for the fish."
Re:How fine is this distinction? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's because man always judges intelligence based on human standards, which is completely idiotic. It would be like me (as a programmer) judging an English professor as an idiot because he doesn't understand code. I'm sure from the perspective of elephants, we're pretty fucking stupid at being elephants. Our intellect isn't well suited for their life style and vice versa.
In short, you're right...human hubris is nearly unbounded. It's very convenient though; we don't have to respect other life on this planet so we can exploit it without regard.
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On the other hand, they may be more intelligent than we'd previously thought,
I take it you're not in the field of comparative cognition or animal cognition. Elephants have been known for some time to be very smart. Among the smartest animals after Dolphins and Chimps, respectively. They have complex language, tool usage, learning skills, and social relationships.
I don't think this study is meant to be a breakthrough understanding of Elephant abilities as much as proof that they possess a specific ability.
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No, biologists think the are smart for an animal. There's always a qualification. I read articles about this stuff several times a year and I always end up shaking my head about how sad the field of biology is.
I think you were answering me, not ahabswhale... (Score:2)
Purely a subjective observation - but I don't get that same sense from dogs (who are undeniably intelligent on some level), birds, cats, fish. Chimps and Great Apes, yes. Lions and tigers and bears - not so much. Elephants - yes, it's unscientific but I can't help the feeling that someone is in there look
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But I still agree wholeheartedly with your post. I still am curious - ever had the overpowering sense of sentience when dealing with a "lower animal"? Maybe I'm just being anthropomorphic.
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No, the truth is nastier: if elephants are not intelligent, it's okay to shoot them for ivory. If pigs are not intelligent, it's okay to slaughter them for delicious bacon. And so forth.
This is, of course, the exact same way humans treat each other too. In
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If you draw a graph of brain size vs. number of words an animal can learn (parrot = 200, cat = 50, dog = 1000), an elephant should be able to learn hundreds of words. A wild animal like an elephant is going to have to be aware of every possible sound from every possible creature (crocodiles snapping, toads croaking, hyenas fighting, vultures crying, lions fighting, as well as watery sounds like thunderstorms, rain, waterfalls and rivers. Then they can also hear infra-sound as they communicate using low freq
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possess abilities we've previously overlooked
Amazing creatures, some of their less well known abilities - They can communicate over long distances (several km) using ultra low frequencies, they pick up the vibrations through their feet, not their ears. In the Congo they dig "post holes" with one foot to mark the correct route where forest paths branch. They can drink stagnant water that would kill most other large mammals, they know the difference from fresh water and no matter how hot and thirsty they cautiously wad in and gently sip the later of fre
Re:How fine is this distinction? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would expect that they're either keying off certain words, or that they're going off phonology (the sounds that are used in a language). It might be a good follow-up study to figure out what method they use to make this distinction (TFA does not say, and the paper is paywalled).
I also wonder how fine a distinction between languages they can make. How close are the Kamba and Maasai languages? If they're relatively distant (like, say, English and Maasai), how do they deal with closer languages (like English and German, or even Spanish and Portuguese)? Are they able to distinguish accents?
Probably the same distinction all sorts of co-habitating animals of different species make when distinguishing between, say, the chattering of harmless monkeys or jungle birds versus the growl of a predatory animal. It makes sense to me, since it seems like the ability to distinguish between animal languages (or even different types of sounds within the same species language) would be a valuable evolutionary trait.
I'd be surprised if they could distinguish fine accents. If you gauge your own ability, you can typically tell when people are speaking different *major* languages, but not between regional differences of the same language, for instance. Or, very closely-related languages are also hard to distinguish for most people. I'd be surprised if elephants were able to distinguish any better than us.
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Yeah, the paywall kind of leaves a bunch of stuff to the imagination.
It's maybe also possible that they are simply smart enough to recall that different specific people use a specific language or that intent is based on things other than language.
Dogs read our emotions by looking at our facial expressions and other body language. They can then associate those with the words we use. It might seem like the dog understands what we say, but it's just Pavlov up to his old tricks.
Maybe the elephants use a simi
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"Dogs read our emotions by looking at our facial expressions and other body language. They can then associate those with the words we use. It might seem like the dog understands what we say, but it's just Pavlov up to his old tricks. "
You know that is exactly how humans do it as well, right? The only difference is that we have a larger vocal recognition center and possess human vocal chords.
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Pavlov hasn't really been a thing in neurology or psychology since the 50s. Lets get that clear before we start spouting grossly outdated theories before we really screw up and start spouting freud.
Dogs do analyse our facial expressions and the like to guage our moods. But its also how humans do it as well. We know that because people who cant, namely people with autism, suffer from something called "mind blindness", the inability to guage the internal states of others.
The thing is, we can only guess at wha
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I did RTFA. I suppose maybe your comprehension failed you in this instance.
My point was that maybe these elephants weren't responding to the recordings themselves, but rather their similarity to real memories of real events that have happened in the past. The elephants aren't responding to the sounds themselves but rather to the trauma that is associated with that sound.
Picture yourself in an alien world. Suddenly, some creature comes up and starts attacking you and making sounds. A little bit later, some
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Elephants are big business [thehindubusinessline.com] in India. They are trucked all the way from East (Assam) to the South (Kerala) in India. The only problem is that these places speak different languages. Usually elephants can obey pretty detailed commands like "pick this palm frond from here and carry it home with you" (so that they can be fed), based on the tone of the voice. It is extremely common for transported elephants to get confused and run amok.
Even wor
Obsolete order. (Score:2)
If it was a new study, it would have found that the proboscidea can tell certain human languages apart and even determine our gender, relative age, and whether we're a threat.
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See the third defintion [wiktionary.org].
We're doomed (Score:4, Funny)
'The trouble is elephants are too smart to be fooled by us for long.'
We're doomed.
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We're doomed.
They know, and they never forget.
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Better pack a trunk and leave....
Racist Elephants! (Score:3)
So... the elephants make decisions about danger based on age, gender, and language?
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Smarter than the TSA.
They do seem to profile mice unfairly though.
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They do seem to profile mice unfairly though.
The elephants know that mice constructed the Earth as a giant supercomputer (making humans only the third most intelligent species on the planet), that mice routinely outsmart much larger predators (cartoon cats), and last, but not least, that a certain pair of genetically-enhanced lab mice are always scheming to take over the world.
If you were an elephant who "never forgets", wouldn't you be wary of any Orson Well-esque rodent?
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Because you name age, gender and language, not race. So they are racist.
Logic and you just don't go along do you.
Actually, I was just guessing that the different languages spoken were correlated with different races and using that as sufficient evidence of racism to support the joke.
Panem et circenses (Score:1)
would be all it takes in this case.
Pink elephants (Score:4, Funny)
Those pink Elephants have been talking to me for YEARS. All it takes is a few beers, then some more...and there they are, floppy ear pink bastards!
Elephants are smarter than you might think (Score:4, Insightful)
elephants have a total of 257 billion neurons, three times more than humans.[1] The elephant's brain is similar to that of humans in terms of structure and complexity—such as the elephant's cortex having as many neurons as a human brain,[2] suggesting convergent evolution.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Their trunks are also quite dexterous, I'm actually surprised there isn't more tool use amongst them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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70kg?! (Score:1)
Nah. that is not true. (Score:2)
Wait. You are not talking about those elephants, are you?
Douglas Adams (Score:2)
Douglas Adams got it wrong - it's the not dolphins who came here from outer space, it's the Elephants!
African elephants (Score:1)