Talking with the elephants

Elephants can follow verbal commands from people.  That's the conclusion  of a study by Think Elephants, a Thailand-based organization that promotes conservation through education.  Can your dog or cat do that?

Perhaps even more surprising the resulting academic paper was coauthored by middle school students living and studying at the East Side Middle School in Manhattan. The students communicated with the principal authors in Africa via Skype.


The founder of Think Elephants, Dr. Joshua Plotnik, arranges for three to four elephants in the camp to hang out with the students while the handlers feed them. The students can ask questions, see inside the elephants’ mouths, watch an impromptu veterinary check, etc. The publication of the paper paper capped off a “three-year endeavor to create a comprehensive middle school curriculum that educates and engages young people directly in elephant and other wildlife conservation.”

Through his experiments, Dr. Plotnik has shown that elephants have cognitive abilities on par with or that exceed dolphins, primates and even approach humans. Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining other animals that have self-awareness, express empathy and lead socially complex lives. They can lend a helping trunk and cooperate with one another in fulfilling complicated tasks. Sometimes they even cheat.