Emily J. Edwards: elephants follow star maps. they show off their babies to friends. they have burial grounds. they call each other by name. they get drunk of purpose, for fun.

elephants follow star maps. they show off their babies to friends. they have burial grounds. they call each other by name. they get drunk of purpose, for fun.

one of my deep seated beliefs is that elephants are one of the other high level intelligences on this planet and that if there is a judgment day humanity will be held to account for our crimes against them www.theguardian.com/science/arti...

Elephants call each other by name, study findswww.theguardian.com Researchers used artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse calls by two herds of African savanna elephants in Kenya

And they understand pointing, which sounds simple but is psychologically extremely complicated!

i once worked on a book from Sesame Street about prepositions of place and i did not envy the writers for having to explain that to children and to know that elephants just kinda... get relational space is astounding.

“Here!” “There!” “Near!” “Far!”

I think it’s only Dogs and Elephants that understand a human pointing

They play jokes.

i let out the softest little, “oh!” i love elephants so much.

Reminds me of this

Elephant Takes off and Hides Woman's Hat in Mouth Then Returns it on Requestyoutu.be This woman visited Mac, the elephant, at a Safari Park in Zimbabwe. She stood next to him and posed for a photograph. Playfully, he took off her hat with his...

So gentle!

Yes they do! I experienced it in India.. An elephant I was working w would suck behind cover when I brought up my camera to take a photo, then peek bank out when I lowered it. Either a game, or she didn't like her photo taken... But it felt like a game..

oooooooooooooh that is new information for me! (Also, they figured that out through machine learning, which I always thought would be a *great* use for it!) That makes cetaceans and elephants as two non-humans that have individual identifiers, right?

One of the saddest, and yet still hopeful, elephant stories I've heard is that elephants are adapting genetically to the presence of poachers. Not all elephants are born with tusks and the poachers leave those alone, so they are breeding no-tusk elephants. www.sciencefocus.com/news/has-ivo....

More and more elephants are being born without tusks. A geneticist explains why.www.sciencefocus.com

A cat's trill when it greets you is unique to that cat and is them announcing themselves. All species of cat have a variation. It's fundamentally their concept of a name. The idea tgat we must accept a species' concept of self based only on one we'd immediately recognise is itself deeply flawed

All cats have three names: the name you name them, the name you call them, and the name they call themselves.

And also the name for when they puke on the carpet, generally some variation on "you bastard"

according to the article whales/dolphins and parrots use something akin to names but they're essentially copying the distinctive sound that the individual makes. like if you had a habit of saying "blow me down!" whenever you were surprised all your friends would call you "blow me down!"

so like possible there's one elephant that's getting called Ian, John, Evan, Giovanni, Ivan, by different friends, but we can't yet prove that all the elephants are just calling him John.

That’s an interesting distinction, I didn’t get that from the Guardian article.

From the Guardian's article, it's more like an individualized "hey you." But the question to research is *how* the speaker decides on the label, and whether it's based on the recipient.

elephants are different in that they use an "arbitrary" sound - it's not something they're copying, it's just something that got made up. there is some evidence that all elephants are using something *similar* to refer to the same individual but no proof yet of them all using the same "name"

I thought the cetacean case was more of a “clan name” than individuating, but my knowledge is certainly old.

No, we know that some dolphin species, at least, have an identifier -- and that they get part of it from their mother. I think we've found it the same in some other cetaceans as well. This was mind-shattering information when it came out.

Thanks for the update; I’ll check it out further.

No, dolphims definitely have individual announcement strings

Petition to save the Okavango Delta, the home to Africa's largest remaining herd of #elephants, from exploitation by the fossil fuel industry secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/...

Africa’s Eden is under assaultsecure.avaaz.org Our future's at stake. Help save our land, home to 1 in 3 surviving African elephants.

I had the absolute honour of witnesses 3 elephants mourning a fourth. They defended its body from scavengers, then eventually turn away. Lastly, they turned and trumpeted to the corpse before leaving. Etosha National Park, Namibia, 2008

The whale and elephant council reckoning is going to be rough for us

We should show more respect to all the animals that have grandmothers as part of their social structure. Elephants, orcas. The Lesser Himalayan Grandmother Stoat.

Yes. They definitely don’t get drunk to forget. 😇

LOOOOL

I’m an idiot and thought you meant like the maps to famous people’s houses they sell on Hollywood Blvd

they have a penchant for SUNSET BOULEVARD.

I have thought this f or a while now. I spent time at a rescue in India. Each elephant was different personality wise, & I swear on my life one was playing a game w me when I tried to take her picture - kept ducking behind a pillar when had the camera up & would peek out when I put it down.

Brb gonna drink entirely too much water and go visit Edison’s grave

Does shouting "Oi, Dumbo!" count?

this video is kinda long but you can watch in real time as a Thai elephant paints an anatomically correct elephant, including using shading and perspective to show that two legs are “behind” the other legs. idc if it was trained to do this or paints the same thing every day, it’s still impressive.

FWIW, www.snopes.com/fact-check/e... Still, it's pretty deft no matter how rote. The cruelty accusation is a whole other matter.

Does a Video Show an Elephant Painting a Picture of an Elephant?www.snopes.com Is this the real thing, the product of digital trickery, or something else?

Read an article the other day of a former rescued elephant coming across an orphaned calf in the wild and guided it back to the elephant rescue where she was raised.

they're non-human people and should be considered as such

Not only do they have burial grounds, they hold funerals.

They just sound like great guys (non-gendered).

We should keep an eye out for any message from them: 'So long and thanks for all the peanuts'

my inability to lose weight starting to make more sense

😍

Thank you

I think they play football?

Think I'll invite one over for my next barbecue.

some country needs to give them rights and citizenship

Yes! Man has always had a ludicrously inflated idea of his sophistication. Humans did not suddenly and magically become that way, they inherited most of it from their ancient progenitors. I watch the familiar familial interplay between cows and calves in the field in front of our house, daily.

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