

This video makes me think I've been underestimating the consciousness of some animals. - blored
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE

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Alex3917
The "mirror self-recognition task" used in cog dev involves placing children
in front of a mirror with a red dot on their forehead. Up until a certain age
the baby treats the image as if it's another child and tries to interact and
play with it. However, the older babies will realize that they are looking at
themselves and will reach up to pull the sticker off their forehead.

They have done the same thing with chimpanzees and elephants and it's really
cool to watch the videos. You see the chimpanzee try to attack its reflection
at first, but then it slowly figures it out and starts grooming its hair and
checking out its teeth and stuff. (And then peeling the sticker off its
forehead.)

Here is a series of YouTube videos on this:

[http://youtube.com/results?search_query=mirror+self-
recognit...](http://youtube.com/results?search_query=mirror+self-
recognition&search_type=)

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Electro
I've seen some of those videos before. I believe the chimp was called betty,
but nevertheless, they gave it/her make up and it started drawing on itself
using the mirror as a guide. Another clip showed it immitating one of the
handlers putting make up on and it started using lipstick on its lip, instead
of its face.

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ArcticCelt
Poor thing, they probably only pay him peanuts for his paintings!

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SwellJoe
To be honest this is far less interesting than the things elephants do in the
wild.

Aside from the usual stuff humans like about some animals, like pair bonding,
raising their young and living as a family, and being very social with each
other and even other species (including humans), there are a lot of other
human-like traits of elephants. Elephants have astonishingly long memories
(it's a wives tale that turns out to be true). They'll pause on the spot where
loved ones have died, even many years later, and groups will console each
other after a loss--having a funeral of sorts. They remember humans who have
been cruel or kind to them in the past, and behave accordingly. They
communicate vocally and are known to express a range of concepts this way--not
just warnings, but also greetings, calls, and "names" (unique identifiers
specific to each elephant). And, recently humans "asked" elephants to carry
cameras into the forest for them, to help study tigers. Since elephants and
tigers are on peaceful terms (what's a tiger gonna do to an animal that could
crush it with one foot?) it worked well, and some amazing footage resulted.

Given all of this, it shouldn't be at all surprising that an elephant could be
trained to paint a particular picture. It is rather unfortunate that it takes
something like this to impress tourists of the intelligence of one of our
closest intellectual peers, when elephants have so many more fascinating
traits and ways of exhibiting impressive intelligence.

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samwise
I agree 100%. The things animals do in the wild are much more fascinating
especially when you consider techniques that humans do not grasp.

The video is interesting but misleading. I would highly doubt that the
elephant has a clue as to what it's painting. Elephants have an incredible
memory and amazing dexterity, those two things coupled together makes it
likely that the elephant is painting from memory. The elephant also
demonstrates some advanced painting skills that i'm sure it was taught. I
would be more impressed of some cave paintings done in wild naturally by
animals.

That being said, it's still a pretty neat video.

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trekker7
Amazing... does anybody have any more information about this? Is this a trick
where an elephant gets trained for many years to draw images, and gets used to
the actions of moving the paintbrush across a canvas in a particular way
(still an awesome feat)? Or do elephants naturally have drawing skills? Is
there evidence that wild elephants draw things on cave walls, etc. by
scratching on them with rocks or something?

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ericb
Most likely, operant conditioning was used to build the behavior-set over
time. There are 3 different videos where the elephant is painting the same
picture, a raised trunk holding a flower, on different canvases and the
elephant always starts with the same line.

Operant conditioning uses small rewards with increasing requirements to build
behaviors. At first the elephant got a peanut for picking up the brush, then
only for swinging it by the paint, then only for dipping it in the paint, etc.

The elephant likely does not have any conception of what it was drawing; most
animals can't mentally translate abstract 2D images to 3D. Even humans, if
they do not develop perspective during a critical period (if you were trapped
in a small room for years, for example), will not understand perspective
correctly.

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mechanical_fish
The funny thing is that the elephants probably wouldn't regard this as
particularly intelligent behavior. Well, except to the extent that a stunt
that gets you peanuts can't be all bad.

On the other hand, if some elephants managed to use operant conditioning (and
a special prosthetic, like a big drum) to teach a human how to subsonically
tell another elephant ten miles away that the herd is gathering near the water
hole, that human would be the star of the elephant world. The elephants would
gather round to marvel at the human's astonishing front feet -- they aren't
really very strong, but they can _pick things up with their toes_ , almost as
if they were using a trunk!

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dcurtis
This elephant can draw better than I can!

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nextmoveone
That is awesome. Thank you for sharing that!

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andreyf
That sentiment is what the up arrow is for.

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bocajuniors
it makes it a lot easier to eat them or force them to do work if you do that

