WEBVTT - Empathic Elephants 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:13.800 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.880 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.960 what did your relationship with the elephant? Hmm? I kind 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.319 of think of them as this kind of ambassador to 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.120 the animal world, Like you know, especially for kids, it's 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:29.640 kind of like the gateway to wonderful creatures with what 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:33.239 we think of is quinde a few merits. Yeah, I 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:36.159 mean kids seem to be really obsessed with with elephants. 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:39.680 I mean my son especially is crazy for them. Yeah, 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:42.200 he'll see see a picture of an elephant and he'll 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.600 go elephant because he'll raise his arm like it's a 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:48.360 trunk and go trumpeting noise and and and we'll say 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.159 it multiple times. Sometimes he'll say it when there are 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:54.000 no elephants around, just in celebration of thinking about elephants. Yeah, 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.520 or yeah, thinking he's an elephant, or and then if 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:58.880 he actually gets to see one in real life, it's 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.120 just all the crazier. Um, you know, we're just looking 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.640 at pictures of me. It goes nuts. And indeed there 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.440 they're unlike any any animal. I mean, they are that 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:12.480 you have this this large lit the largest living land creature. Uh. 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:14.880 And and so they're they're imposing in that respect, but 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.480 they're also they have this peaceful air to them as well. 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.840 Most of the time. Uh. They have this this trunk 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.800 that is that that again is unlike like just about 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.240 anything else you see in the in the animal world. 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.280 And I think it's because that trunk is so expressive. Yes, 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.200 it does has a lot of emotion to it. It's 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:35.319 reaching around, it's grabbing things, it's uh, it's it's they're 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:38.680 manipulating water with it and uh. And their their eyes 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.040 are very peaceful as well. So there's that we can't 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:46.240 help but empathize with the elephant on on on a 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.360 very basic level. That there's something just kind of sweet 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.680 and comforting about them, and and children especially seen in 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.840 tune to this. Yeah. And in terms of folklore, they 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.880 have long been associated with courage and wisdom. In fact, 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.480 if you creativity, if you look get Hinduism, you'll see 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:03.400 the origin of the elephant as a symbol of good 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.920 luck Ganesha um, you know, the the luck god, the 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:12.280 remover of obstacles. Yep, I have a Ganesha right here. Bam, 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.320 always carry one in my pocket. You said, Oh my gosh, guys, 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.000 if you could see this, he just produced Ganesha just 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.720 threw it on the table proof. Okay, So yeah, I 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.080 mean these are really important to us, um, just as 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.639 an idea of what an animal is and has is 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.120 kind of a mirror to ourselves. I mean, we can't 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.520 help but empathize with them. Yeah, and humans, Uh, there 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.560 are many cases of humans forging strong emotional bonds with elephants, 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.600 uh and uh. And there are a number of wonderful 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.760 conservation efforts out there, and I mentioned some of those 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.600 at the end of the show. Um, particular efforts you 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.040 might be interested in reading more about and potentially supporting 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.120 in some shape or another. But in mentioning the conservation 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.200 and in mentioning the emotional bonds between human uh and 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.440 elephant that that kind of leads to the large number 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.359 of negatives here, because of course, when humans are interacting 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.639 on a daily basis with an elephant, it means that 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.919 that elephant is in captivity and perhaps used for labor, 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.880 perhaps uh put an enclosure in a zoo. Generally that's 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:19.600 gonna be way too small for it. When we're talking 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:24.520 about conservation efforts. Those conservation efforts are in place due 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.000 to the what we have done to the to the 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.080 elephants natural habitat and what we have done to decrease 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.560 their numbers in the wild. Yeah, so a couple of things. So, 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.800 as you already mentioned, there's the captivity angle, and so 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.720 we typically see an elephant at the zoo right and 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.920 Fred Berkovitch of the Sandy Zoo rightes that in Africa, 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.720 elephants can cover over fifty miles or eighty kilometers in 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.600 a day if food is scarce, but rarely walk that far. 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.920 More often they cover a few miles during the day, 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:54.840 and they sometimes spend most of their time near water source. 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.000 Now contrast that with twenty two hundred square feet. That 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.320 is the amount of space that is recommended by the 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:07.320 American Zoological Association. Joyce Pool, she is the research director 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.360 of the Ambo Celly Elephant Research Project, rights, just a 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:16.000 thought by a z A logic, that's the Zoological Association. 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.679 We might suggest that human beings, being about two percent 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.920 the body weight and of an elephant, would do just 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.040 find living in forty four square feet if we were 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:29.640 provided food, water, and a breeding partner. So we began 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.160 to look at that, and then you began to look 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.839 at the whole poaching situation. And consider that we have 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:40.240 lost six of force elephants in the Congo basin due 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:43.080 to poaching during the first decade of this century. And 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:45.680 she says at that rate, they could go extinct in 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.000 ten years. And then we of course have seen the 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.640 recent violence in the Central African republic Um and that 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.400 is there's a ton of poaching going on there just 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:58.920 to fund military operations. Yeah, and then you have plenty 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.440 of examples to of elephants coming into conflict with with 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:06.360 farmers because here you have and it's a tough situation, 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:08.600 because you have you have farmers that are trying to 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.360 to to a farm the small area of land, grow 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.520 crops uh to to feed their family, make money. And 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.599 then the elephants come through. The elephants. Each adult elephant 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:19.640 is gonna need some of three four hundred pounds of 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.719 food per day, and they're going to make short work 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.080 of a small human farm uh. And then and there 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.400 they tend to be pretty destructive in their in their 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.800 their style of eating. If you've ever seen a footage 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.520 of elephants, you know, just pushing over trees to get 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.279 to the to the greens. Uh. You know, that's that's 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.200 their style, and so they can they can really care 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.320 a farm apart in in very short order. So you 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.400 end up with with humans and uh and and elephants 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.800 coming into conflict in that situation. Yeah, and that's habit lost, right. 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:50.400 I mean, you would probably do the same thing if 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.560 you lost a good deal of your land, you would 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:54.680 move on to another area. And then of course that's 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.240 where the conflict with humans comes into play. Yeah, though, 0:05:58.240 --> 0:05:59.960 I mean, because they tend to eat grass as lee, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.320 these bamboo bark roots. But if there's a crop of bananas, 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.560 if there's a crop of sugarcane or what have you, 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.320 you know they're going to go for that. Um. Now, 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.240 it's to put the throughout a few more numbers here 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:13.799 to just put this in the in perspective about about 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.280 where elephant populations are. According to Defenders of Wildlife, at 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.400 the turn of the twentieth century, there were a few 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:24.480 million African elephants in about a hundred thousand Asian elephants um. 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.119 Today they are in estimated four hundred and fifty thousand 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.120 to seven hundred thousand African elephants in between thirty five 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.599 thousand and forty thousand wild Asian elephants, with the with 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:35.760 the Asian elephant being you know, far more on the 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.000 endangered into the spectrum. Yeah, and we should keep in 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.720 mind to that the average lifespan of an elephant in 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:46.039 the wild is sixty to seventy years UM. So when 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.080 we start to think about that, and we we begin 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:52.039 to see them, um the devastating effects of poaching and 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:56.840 habitat loss in captivity in some areas, then you can't 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.640 help but anthropomorphize them and begin to think, oh, they 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.040 live for seventy years on par with what humans are living. 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:07.080 To you know, what else is similar to humans? How else, um, 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:11.480 do they really differ from other mammals? Now I mentioned 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.080 African and Asian elephants earlier. That's an important distinction. There 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:19.239 are two major species of elephant. There's the African elephant, 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.920 and we can divide those into two subspecies, the savannah 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.400 and the forest. And while the the Asian elephant, on 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:29.280 the other hand, we can divide that into four subspecies 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.800 Sri Lankan, Indian, Sumatran, and borneo. Now, how can you 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:35.800 tell one from the other, Well, it's pretty simple. Once 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.400 it's been pointed out to you, Julie, Well, this is 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:40.960 kind of neat the African elephants actually their ears are 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.440 shaped like the continent of Africa. And then of course 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.240 with the Asian elephants, their ears are smaller. Yeah. The 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:49.720 the African elephants ears look like they're made for sailing 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:52.640 on the high seas, and the Asian elephants ears are 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:55.800 are more sort of floppy and subdued and smaller. Yeah. 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:57.720 You know, it's really cool about those ears too. Is 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.160 besides being able to pick up on bois and sound, 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:04.640 they have tons of tiny veins that transact their surfaces 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.560 and they carry blood to the rest of the body 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.200 and they act like a cooling system. Yeah, it's really 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.760 really amazing elephants here is is essentially there to cool 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.360 the body. Uh. It's kind of like the big fins 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:18.960 you would see in some of these prehistoric dinosaurs, you know, 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:20.960 where they it's all about getting the blood vessels up 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.400 into a surface they can be used to cool. Yeah. 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.400 So if you see them flapping their ears over over 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:27.880 again on a hot day, that's them just trying to 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:33.079 cool themselves down. And of course they're trunks, their trunks yes, yeah, 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.719 when they're when they're born, you have I mean, we're 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.520 talking about how how instantly we attach emotionally to elephants, 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.000 even more so if you see a baby elephant, baby 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.560 elephant is among the most adorable things you could possibly 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.920 look at. And uh, when they're born, though, their trunks 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:49.640 don't really have any muscle tones, so they just kind 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.800 of flop around and then they're having only nurse straight 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.200 up with their mouths. Yeah, and they're just again we 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.360 talked about it before, they're so adaptable. Those those trunks 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.960 they're used to smell, to eve, to drink, to retrieve food, 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:04.800 to trumpet and as we'll talk a little bit more 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.160 about in a second caress, but before we do so, 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:13.439 let's talk a little bit about elephant intelligence. Yes, elephants are, 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.480 of course extremely intelligent. They have they have memories that 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:19.880 span years. That wold adage and elephant member it never 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.640 forgets well, it's it's based in truth. They have they 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:25.000 have long memories and they need those long memories because 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.760 you know, we mentioned earlier about how about how vast 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.120 there range tends to be. So you'll have a herd 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.520 of elephants it's led by a matriarch, and they're having 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.400 to go across vast stretches of land, and they're gonna 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.800 have to remember like where's the water, Where's where's the 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.120 good food? Where they where the good eats? Where should 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.400 I not go? Like where's an area that might be 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.280 h certain death? Uh you know to uh to venture into? 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:51.560 And as you say, that requires quite a bit of memory. Um. 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.360 It turns out the elephants can hear one another's trumpeting 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.440 calls up to five miles or eight kilometers away. In 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.640 according to biologists Grea Turkolo, who is part of the 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.440 Elephant Listening Project, a very very cool project. The females 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:09.280 do most of the talking. There's no syntax in their language, 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.839 so there's no evidence that they form sentences, but they 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:16.680 can recognize each other's voices. In fact, uh, they can 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:21.680 identify at least one hundred other individual elephants by voice. 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.160 And this was borne out in a sound playback experiment 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.840 by Karen McComb, who is an animal psychologist at the 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.240 University of Sussex in the UK. Now, one interesting thing 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.200 about those trumpeting communications that the elephants use. Um, they 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.680 can communicate over these long distances also by producing a 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.000 sub sonic rumble. They can travel through the ground faster 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.400 than through the air. You know, there's have you ever 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.720 seen like an old Western where like any of American 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.480 trackers putting putting his ear to the ground, you know, 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.079 because because sound waves are going to move faster through 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.079 the ground. Uh, it's similar situation. So other elephants then 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.880 receive the messages through the sensitive skin on their feet 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:03.720 and on their trunks, and it's a belief this is 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.480 how potential mates and social groups communicate. Yeah, and just 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:09.719 so you know how sensitive their skin is, they can 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.720 detect a fly landing on it. So there's quite a 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.640 level of um sensitivity there. And I want to tell 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:19.960 us I mentioned the Elephant Listening program has been in 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:24.559 the work since has delivered some really intriguing data on 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.679 elephant communication that really helps us to better understand the 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:31.600 social bonds the elephants have with one another. Now, in 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:37.240 terms of numerical skills, elephants actually outperform great apes, chips 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:41.960 and human children at the task of figuring out the 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:46.160 quantity of something that is put in a bucket. And 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:50.040 in fact that their understanding or their numbers sense is 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.120 so nuanced that they can easily tell the difference between 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.840 five and six rocks, for instance, um as opposed to 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.280 something pretty easy like one and two. Now that's interesting 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:01.880 because we've talked in the past about the algorithmic thinking 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:06.280 in young children and their their way of understanding numbers 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:07.800 is that they might not be able to tell the 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.000 difference between five and six, they can tell the difference 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.320 between six and three. I've got three, um, you know, 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:17.000 three cheerios is definitely less than six, but five cheers 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.120 as the six cheerios. I don't know. I'll just take 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:21.200 whichever hand is you know comes out to me first. 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:23.840 So yeah, I mean elephants can distinguish to that degree. 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.160 It's pretty amazing. Now, that's one way to look at 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.079 an elephant intelligence. But but to really get into the 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.559 guts of it, you have to start looking at their society, 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.280 and they're there in their communication within that society. Yeah. Really, 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.920 at the core of elephant society, we're talking about matriarchs 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:46.320 who are the oldest elephants and families with complex social relationships. Yeah, 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.120 you'll have a herd that is it's led by the oldest, 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.959 often the largest female. Uh, and it's just going to 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.200 be an all female herd with some young ones in 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:56.880 there that they're all sort of collectively looking after, though 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:00.120 of course with the with the actual mom for that 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.520 providing most of the the care and assistance. Meanwhile, the 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.760 male elephants, they tend to be just loners out there 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:08.880 roaming on their own. Occasionally they'll take up with another 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.160 male or so, Yeah, you get some bachelor pods from 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.400 time to time, but for the most part, it's just 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:15.880 you know, they're they're doing their own thing. And it 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.120 kind of comes back to what we've talked about before 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.800 when it comes to the gender divide in in a species, 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.440 that the female is the species and the male is 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:25.959 just necessary for reproduction. Well, it's kind of the whole 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.520 takes the village concept because the females typically remain with 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.680 their families their whole lives, and they rear their calves 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.520 alongside their mother's grandmother's sisters and aunts, and they all 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.880 helped to take care of the calves um. And this 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:41.760 is really cool to these elephant families are really fluid 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.400 in their association patterns, meaning that not all members are 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.800 together all of the time. So if a food sources scares, 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:51.880 that means that a couple of them might pair off 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:53.880 and then meet up later on. And you know, it 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:56.679 works out for genetic diversity that the males are separate anyway, 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.760 because you can have this, you know, a close net 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.360 grew of females that are all related. Uh, you need 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.360 the genes, you need some extra genes to come in 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.079 from outside of that community. And thus these uh, these 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.280 loaners out there on the outskirts. Yeah, and it's also 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.160 interesting that the females do do a lot of the talking, 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.360 and I think that ties back to the matriarch and 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.439 again the raising of the calves. So of course it 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.080 would make sense that among elephants chatter, you hear more 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.120 female voices trying to coordinate what they're gonna do, when 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.280 they're going to do it, and particularly the matriarch. If 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:30.800 if there's uh, if food is scarce and they really 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.480 have to figure out directions and where they're going to go, 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.600 then the matriarch is usually a person who tries to 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:37.880 coordinate that effort. Now, of course, one part of being 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.400 um in a community of humans is that we are 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.680 self aware of our our place in that community and uh, 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:47.240 and it seems that that it's a similar situation for 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:51.160 the elephant. Elephant is one of the very few creatures 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.440 aside from humans, that can pass a self awareness test. 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.480 We've talked about this in the past, I believe, with 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.440 a few other animals, but the elephants can recognize themselves 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:03.880 in a mirror. The only other animals that can really 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.720 pull this off humans apes, dolphins, And if you understand, 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.200 based on some arguments, you could say that an octopus 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:13.560 can do this, but you have to have a very 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.200 different type of tests for them because their brains are 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:20.400 so different and and even among you know, humans, apes 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:22.920 and elephants, I mean, the elephant's brain is different from 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.720 an ape or a humans brain, uh in in in 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:28.480 some respects. You know, it's as you can never do 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:30.520 a one to one when you're comparing the human brain 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.160 to another species. But when they when they look at 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:37.000 themselves in the mirror, they quickly realize that that they 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.720 are looking at themselves. They'll look behind the mirror and 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.000 then it will quickly descend into them sort of goofing off. 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:44.760 Like what happens if I put my trunk in my 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:46.160 mouth while I'm looking in the mirror? What do I 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.040 do this? What do I do that? Yeah, but it's 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.280 essential to note that they are self aware. They're not 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:53.720 just uh, you know this this animal out there sort 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.040 of encased in the mud of of existence. They know 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.960 they exist and and that should really carry more way 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.280 when we think about what elephants are and how we 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:06.000 interact with them. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:07.840 but when we get back, we are going to talk 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.520 about this self awareness, this sort of society um is 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.360 rich bonds the elephants have, and how they actually exhibit 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:27.480 a very human phenomenon called emotional contagion. All right, we're back. 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.640 Emotional contagion. We we see different examples of this with 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:33.960 humans over and over again. It can be, you know, 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:36.920 at a party and there's this emotional contagion going on, 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.360 depending on you know, how someone is is acting and 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.040 how people are looking to others um to respond to that. 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.960 Should they join in on whatever behavior is being exhibited? 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.000 Oh yeah, I think we've all definitely been a part 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.400 of the sort of social conversations where the conversation is, uh, 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:55.480 isn't as kind of a medium zone, and then somebody 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.400 kind of takes the wheel and it's increasingly going into 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.920 uncomfortable territory and you feel that need to to step 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:04.560 in and change the subject move you know, pulled up, 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.320 pull the vehicle back on the road. Yeah. And so 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:09.879 what you see here is that this, this very kind 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:14.640 of human thing is happening among elephants, this emotional contagion. 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.000 Researcher Josh Plotnik of the University of Cambridge in the 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.000 UK studied the behavior of twenty six elephants in captivity 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.560 over the course of year, and he found that when 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:27.320 an elephant would show distress, the other elephants would a 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:31.080 doubt that same emotional state. An example of this distress 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.720 would be in this case, like thinking they saw a 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.280 snake in the grass, you know, something that's a definite, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.879 uh potential danger to the the the elephant community, and 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.359 they're going to react, and then that emotional state quickly 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:46.639 spreads to the other elephants. You're concerned, why I'm concerned 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:48.480 to what are you concerned about? And they would act 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.359 just as a human would. They they swiftly go to 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:53.919 each other, right, and they touch each other's faces and 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.000 I don't think humans do this genitals, and they put 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.040 trunks in each other's mouth and they chirp their w 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.919 You're trying to make some very soothing chirping noises to 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.400 say it's all right. Yeah, And this is really important 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.399 because you know, there are a number of cases of 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:14.399 observed empathy in elephants. There's a two thousand three study 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.920 from Catherine Paine's Elephant Listening projects we mentioned earlier observed 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.440 a dying calf like numerous responses both from its own 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.040 family and others in the herd. Uh. There's a two 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.439 thousand six paper that looked at the behavioral reactions of 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.560 elephants towards a dying and decease matriarch um. But this, uh, 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.680 this this empathy study with these twenty six captive elephants. Uh, 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.600 it provides us a little like more sort of hard 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:44.720 evidence for uh empathy, for this emotional contagion and uh 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.640 and and you need that because again we talked about 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.240 how we talked before about how humans anthropomorphizes anything, and 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.920 there's always there's already a lot that's that's that's human 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.359 like in the elephant. So we have to be careful 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:00.000 in steadying them, not to just keep on the rest 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.399 of our human baggage and starting, you know, putting on 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:04.960 little hats. Yeah, I know, I was thinking about that. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:06.800 I was just thinking about our pensant for just trying 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.080 to turn anything into a smile life face, even if 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:11.800 it's an inanimate object. But then I thought too, in 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.800 some of these cases, it's so very clear that the behavior, 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:17.840 it seems very clear that the behavior is spelling out 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:22.600 these sort of community bonded social phenomena that you would 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:27.200 see and within humans, within the human tribe um. But again, 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:31.560 it's very difficult to quantify that in a scientific way. Um. 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:33.960 And that's why, as you say, this experiment with the 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.080 twenty six elephants is so important, because it does give 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.880 a scientific community some sort of foothold in that arena. 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.000 But it's it's hard to re enact a lot of 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.159 what people anecdotally see. And one of the things that 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:51.320 I'm thinking about is this idea of grieving elephants, and 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:54.879 not just elephants grieving for one another, but this case 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.600 of someone named Lawrence Anthony. Now he was a conservationist 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.439 and an author known as the elephant Whisperer, and in 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.719 two thousand and twelve he had a heart attack. Now, 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.359 he had taken a group of wild elephants and he 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.439 had rescued them and rehabilitated them on the day that 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.520 he died. They traveled something like twelve hours to reach 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.119 his house and they had not been to his home 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.720 in eighteen months. And so of course people who saw 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.960 this began to construe this as the elephants keeping vigil. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.440 They actually hung out for two days at his home. 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.960 And again the problem here is how do you take 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.399 a scientific lens to this. You can't. You can't re 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.520 enact this experiment, right, And I mean, if you were gonna, 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:46.320 you know, to play the critic here, you could say, well, 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:48.719 the elephants move around a lot anyway, and if they 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.399 have long memories, as we as we mentioned earlier, so 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:53.280 it's in you know, of course they would come back 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.360 to a place they'd been to before, where they had 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.800 presumably received you know, some comfort, maybe maybe even food, 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:06.120 what have you. That's true. And another interesting account involving 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:10.080 memory in place has to do with South Africa in 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:14.920 the late twentieth century at Kruger National Park. Yes, that's 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.879 where they were calling the elephant population, so that they 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.320 were having some attempt to conserve the elephant. But they 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:24.439 were afraid that if the the elephant population grew too large, 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.080