[HN Gopher] Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible...
___________________________________________________________________
Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible "pranking"
among pachyderms
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 204 points
Date : 2024-11-11 07:17 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| blitzar wrote:
| > Anchali figured out she could interrupt her colleague's showers
| by picking the hose up with her trunk and kinking it to stop the
| water flow.
|
| The old tricks are the best tricks. Now wait for them to point
| the nozzle at their face and release.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| And in 3 generations, elephants will be producing sexy carwash
| videos for each other on Only Pachyderms.
| efitz wrote:
| Only 'Fants
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| This is as good a spot as any to inform the crowd that
| female elephants have shockingly human-like breasts. Go
| ahead and look it up.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Why is it shocking?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Well, this is going to be my new ice-breaker at the next
| party I don't want to be at.
| torbengee wrote:
| Thank you.
| elliotwagner wrote:
| I wonder whether they feel some kind of enjoyment from these
| kinds of actions
| frostburg wrote:
| Anectodally elephants do things like hiding and revaling
| objects for no apparent reason other than comical effect. One
| could build elaborate evolutionary fitness reasons for this,
| but I mean...
| deadbabe wrote:
| Elephants that make other elephants laugh get laid more
| often.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Of course, animals are conscious and enjoy things and feel pain
| too. Just less intelligent and with less language ability than
| humans. Chimps and dogs certainly understand humour. I wouldn't
| be surprised if elephants do too, being social creatures.
| thanksgiving wrote:
| I think it is also important to note here that apparently not
| all humans understand humor either or understand it
| differently or something.
| roenxi wrote:
| Humour often involves saying something that isn't true (why
| don't ants catch colds? Because of they have anty bodies -
| great joke but not true on a number of levels). A
| surprising number of humans don't have the mental cycles
| available to consider counterfactuals, hypotheticals or
| entertain ideas that aren't directly rooted in reality. I
| suspect that means they can't process humour and they just
| laugh if the crowd is.
|
| It goes beyond humour, you can see it in a lot of scenarios
| and it ruins politics. There are people who appear
| literally unable to consider hypothetical scenarios. Not in
| a nasty way, they're sometimes wonderful people to have on
| hand. They simply only deal in reality as they see it. You
| can walk them slowly through a "and what if ... happens?"
| and they can't do it.
| berkes wrote:
| (Human) Humor is a far broader spectrum than you describe
| here too. It can range from "ROFTL because someone
| accidentally stepped in poop" to deeply layered liguistic
| jokes like you describe.
| leftbit wrote:
| One aspect of humor depends on cognitive flexibility.
| Puns work that way.
|
| So if you're not able to make the right mental context
| switch at the right moment, you won't get the joke.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I once dated someone who couldn't consider hypotheticals
| or how they could be used as a reasoning tool.
| Disagreements were the most frustrating thing ever
| because I couldn't play devils advocate or steelman. She
| thought I was agreeing with her intermittently to make
| her mad. She had no concept of walking in someone else's
| shoes or arguing a position you don't actually hold. It
| blew my mind.
| socksy wrote:
| Just because you don't understand the Germans' humour
| doesn't mean that it doesn't exist ;)
| leftbit wrote:
| It's difficult to reason about intelligence in this context.
|
| Human intelligence is defined by behavior we humans value.
| Intelligence tests are geared to measuring these aspects.
|
| Intelligence tests devised by animals would look totally
| different - and it's quite thinkable humans wouldn't do too
| well taking them.
|
| Wouldn't assume that animals have less language ability than
| we humans, unless we totally figured out what other species
| are really talking about. Unless we do this is just an
| assumption.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Humans are fundamentally not that different from other animals
| really. Any emotion you have, they have. It's a Victorian era
| misconception that humans are somehow a unique species with all
| these wonderful properties and animals are dumb.
| gwd wrote:
| > Victorian era misnomer
|
| Isn't this exactly the opposite? Read Aristotle or Aquinas
| and they have all kinds of definitions about why humans are
| fundamentally different in nature than animals; and Darwin,
| whose work made it much more palpable to believe that humans
| _were_ just another kind of animal, did his work smack in the
| middle of the Victorian era.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think that largely depends on how you look at it. As with
| any topic, Greek philosophers had widely different opinions
| across schools of thought and generations. Many highlighted
| rational thinking as the line between humans and animals,
| while still thinking animals intelligent and emotional. I
| do agree with your point on Darwin, but why that point
| works is exactly because his work contrasted with the rest
| of his peers. His work was also far from being widely
| accepted at first, and was met with heavy skepticism on
| many, if not most fronts. It was only later that this
| became a widely accepted part of science.
| gwd wrote:
| OK, I think I see what you meant: Not that the "misnomer"
| arose in the Victorian era, but that the Victorian era
| was the last era in which you would expect to encounter
| this "misnomer".
|
| As a counterpoint, I recommend reading Everlasting Man,
| by G. K. Chesterton. If humans are just animals, they're
| the most bizarre animal we've ever seen.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| a misnomer is a failure in naming ie peanuts, koala bear,
| etc. I think you mean misconception.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Thanks for denomering my misnomer misconception. Joking
| aside, I appreciate you correcting me, I'm not a native
| speaker, so these small issues pop up here and there, and
| it helps when you point them out.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| it's a common error even of native speakers, and I hadn't
| the faintest clue it mightn't be your first language. I
| am barely conversant in one, so consider me shamed.
| card_zero wrote:
| Jeremy Bentham popularized animal rights before the Victorian
| era. His well-known line was "The question is not, Can they
| _reason?_ nor, Can they _talk?_ but, Can they _suffer?_ ".
|
| This was at the same time part of an argument against (human)
| slavery. "The French have already discovered that the
| blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be
| abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It
| may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs
| ..."
|
| Quite apart from the suffering being a supposition
| (essentially based on the "duck test"), this leaves
| unaddressed the question of why the ability to suffer should
| confer rights. Elsewhere he makes the point that adult
| animals have more morality than similarly aged humans
| (toddlers), which is at least in the same ballpark as the
| idea of rights. But I don't think we even know why we grant
| creatures rights.
| guappa wrote:
| Ancient romans were already conscious about not killing
| species off to not make them extinct.
| autoexec wrote:
| Animals have to get their enjoyment where they can. It's always
| fun to watch them play. You can start to think that animals are
| always optimizing the time they spend being active and are
| carefully preserving their energy in order to survive, but then
| you see some birds going sledding
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0OjCneVUg) and it's clear
| that they're just in it for the fun.
| Jarmsy wrote:
| This summer I spent an hour watching a pair of magpies harass
| a fox. The fox was trying to sunbathe, but the magpies kept
| dive-bombing it, pecking its tail, and landing in front of it
| then flying away just as the fox went for them, all while
| making a chattering sound that seemed a lot like laughter.
| I've heard theories that they do this as revenge for stolen
| eggs, or to chase foxes away from their nests, but this was
| in an open patch of ground far from where they nest and it
| really looked to me that they were just teasing it for fun.
| bayindirh wrote:
| They may know that particular fox.
|
| Crows can identify singular persons, hold grudge against
| them and disseminate the information around to make sure
| that particular person has a hard time [0].
|
| Magpies are also very smart birds, aggressively protecting
| their nests and offspring from cats and other threats. So
| they may have identified that fox somewhere else.
|
| Also, IIRC, magpies and crows are somewhat related.
|
| [0]: https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-
| individ...
| vidarh wrote:
| > Also, IIRC, magpies and crows are somewhat related.
|
| They are both corvids (members of the family Corvidae)
| along with ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and others. Most
| corvids are fairly smart.
| rolandog wrote:
| In my hometown, sometimes birds (I think they may have been
| crows) swoop across real close to cars along a straight
| stretch of highway. I've had to slow down sometimes
| thinking I might hit one.
|
| I like to imagine they go back to their group of bird bros
| and say: "Ha! Made him flinch!".
| Jarmsy wrote:
| One of favourite examples of this sort of thrill seeking
| animal behaviour is this gibbon pulling the ears of a
| young tiger https://youtu.be/SHXo-BpE8T8
| rolandog wrote:
| That is fascinating! The laps he runs around the young
| tigers! Thanks for the link.
| jl6 wrote:
| That's a cool video but I'm not 100% convinced that crow is
| "having fun". It looks equally plausible that the crow is
| trying to break open the object, possibly in search of food.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| There's an interesting article by David Graeber on how we
| characterize play and fun among animals:
| https://davidgraeber.org/articles/whats-the-point-if-we-
| cant....
|
| I can't say that I've understood it all, but he appears to
| criticize scientists for not thinking about play seriously, and
| instead reducing most aspects of animal behavior to things like
| survival, fitness, and evolutionary pressure.
| gpderetta wrote:
| > fun [...] survival, fitness, and evolutionary pressure.
|
| This has to be both right? Animals (and humans) evolved play
| because it has evolutionary benefits, but the immediate
| reward for play must be fun.
| pineaux wrote:
| Or it could be an unintended consequence...
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > Animals (and humans) evolved play because it has
| evolutionary benefits
|
| I know the turn of phrase is popular even amongst
| biologists but I still think it's weird to put it this way.
|
| Evolution is a dynamic feedback loop on a multi-
| generational time scale. Plenty of neutral things can be
| transmitted for a long time without being culled out by
| evolutionary pressure and social behaviour can remain for a
| long time without being genetic at all.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Play has a purpose, it hones reflexes, teaches youth
| about concealment, traps, ambushes, what their bodies can
| do, whether running away works in a scenario or fighting
| is better.
|
| It also shows who is best to lead a fight. Play much like
| curiosity, makes you able to navigate your environment.
| It very much has extreme usefulness.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Sure, maybe, but if you tried you could come up with a
| similar explanation for literally any behavior or
| emotion. It might be true, but it isn't falsifiable.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It's literally the current mainstream theory. I think you
| need more pickles on your sandwich to claim otherwise.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| That's not the point. Evolutionary pressure doesn't care
| if something is or isn't useful per see. It's all
| situational anyway.
|
| To simplify a lot, either you have offsprings and your
| genes spread or you don't and they don't. Evolution is
| not a purposeful process towards fitness. It's a
| reification of the results of the way genes are passed,
| how they and the environment affect individual
| characteristics and how an individual fitness to their
| current environment impacts their chance to mate.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The idea that everything has an evolutionary function is
| really popular and it's complete pseudoscience.
| polytely wrote:
| there is this study that shows bumblebees exhibit behaviour
| that looks a lot like what we would call playing, seems to
| serve no purpose except being enjoyable.
|
| My sorta crank belief is that we are massively underestimating
| the intelligence and consciousness of animals (and possibly
| even plants?)
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334722...
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Plants do not have consciousness. Reacting to stimuli does
| not require conscious processing.
|
| Like, I'm all for "we're underestimating animal brains" but
| they do have to _have_ brains.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Why do they have to have brains? Is it impossible that
| another structure could serve a similar purpose? Like, how
| long did it take us to figure out what brains are for?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| They don't need to have "brains" in the sense that humans
| do, ie. discrete neurons and axons, but they do need to
| have "neural networks" - networks of nonlinear operators
| with a training mechanism. I'm aware of zero evidence
| that trees perform computation on a larger-than-single-
| cell basis.
| slavik81 wrote:
| You cannot direct growth at the scale of a single cell.
| There are many computations (based on hormonal gradients
| and other mechanisms) that occur at the scale of larger
| structures, such as leaves or branches. Of course, those
| mechanicisms are not going to create consciousness.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| A fair point!
| nicoburns wrote:
| We have no evidence that plants have consciousness, but
| then our only evidence that even other humans have
| consciousness is that they are somewhat similar to
| ourselves. We cannot detect it directly. If there were
| consciousness in the world that was significantly different
| to our own then we likely would be ignorant of it.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| We do know that human consciousness has something to do
| with the networks of neurons in our brains. We know this
| because we can poke specific parts of it and manipulate
| specific aspects of our consciousness: we can observe a
| fairly direct correspondence between conscious experience
| and biological substrate.
| eszed wrote:
| To play devil's advocate: have a look at the way plants
| in a forest communicate with each other - even across
| different species! That's a complex network, in which
| individual plants could be analogized to neurons.
|
| Do I think forests are conscious in the same way that we
| are? No. I do think "consciousness" is not a binary, and
| that we have poor tools and insufficiently-developed
| models for understanding it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > We have no evidence that plants have consciousness, but
| then our only evidence that even other humans have
| consciousness is that they are somewhat similar to
| ourselves.
|
| I don't have evidence I have consciousness. You assume
| you have it, but if you didn't what would really change?
| It's a made up word and the semantic value of the
| sentence "I have consciousness" is something like "I am
| special". Can you define consciousness in an objective
| way such that, were I to not have consciousness anything
| would be different for me?
|
| It's the secular word for "soul", but at least the
| religious people have some ideas about what their woowoo
| nonsense terminology means.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > It's the secular word for "soul", but at least the
| religious people have some ideas about what their woowoo
| nonsense terminology means.
|
| The fact that I experience anything at all (as opposed to
| being an unthinking being as we assume robots or machines
| to be) seems like _something_ to me. I can 't explain
| what it is, but it seems different to anything else I
| observe in the world.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| Well,
|
| https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-weve-
| si...
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Calling this a "scream" is violence against the English
| language.
|
| When a log crackles as it burns, those crackles do not
| correspond to an experience of suffering.
| diegolas wrote:
| i can guarantee you horses can and do annoy people for fun
| forinti wrote:
| So my brother was in a zoo somewhere in Europe (I forget which
| one) and he was watching the penguins. The enclosure had
| various levels and one penquin was throwing stones at a fellow
| penguin down below. It would throw a stone and then hide behind
| the ledge and the penguin it was taunting would look up to try
| to find out what was going on.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Since when is using a hose as a shower considered "sophisticated
| tool use"?
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Sophisticated is a synonym of advanced.
|
| In elephant point of view, hose and shower are definitely
| sophisticated (=advanced) tools. While they may experience it
| regularly, they usually dont operate them. Like humans with
| airplanes.
| bell-cot wrote:
| By "average animal" standards, it's quite sophisticated.
|
| And these day - clicky headlines suggesting advanced
| intelligence in charismatic animals are great for paying the
| bills.
| nkrisc wrote:
| When it's an elephant doing so. It would not be sophisticated
| for a human.
| itronitron wrote:
| For a human, it could be considered a developmental
| milestone.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's a good point. For a sufficiently young human it
| would be considered sophisticated.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Would it be considered more advanced if it was using it as a
| password cracking tool? ;)
| komali2 wrote:
| > Mary is "left-trunked"--the equivalent of left-handed in humans
| --so holding the hose made it easier for her to reach her left
| side. She tended to spray her right side with her trunk, because
| she preferred to curve her proboscis that way.
|
| I can't believe this line, it's such a ridiculous and bizarre
| thing it sounds like a joke. The famously singly-appendeged
| creature can also be left-handed. Come on.
|
| Apparently though, not a joke, elephants really are right or
| left-"handed." https://dspace.spbu.ru/handle/11701/7138 "Context-
| dependent lateralization of trunk movements in wild Asian
| elephants." What a hilarious planet.
| masklinn wrote:
| Lateralisation is _extremely_ common, snails are famously
| lateralised leading some of their predators to be such (they
| have jaws curving to one side, to better follow the shell).
| Snail shells mostly spiral to the right (90% IIRC, about the
| same as right handedness in humans) but in areas where
| lateralised predators are very common left-handed snails have a
| much higher presence, up to 30%.
| fragmede wrote:
| _Molecules_ have a handed-ness. everything from there on up
| is doomed to have that problem somewhere.
| dahart wrote:
| Why, what makes you think there's any connection? Molecule
| handedness doesn't affect animal handedness, they are
| completely independent things with completely independent
| mechanisms, and the materials in between animal and
| molecule (shell, bone, skin, nerves, vasculature, etc.)
| don't have any known handedness. We already know that not
| everything has that problem.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I think they just see asymmetry as a parent of handednes.
| Bones and skin and so are not symmetric, as probably
| anything in the universe (but some specific molecules,
| atoms and crystals?)
| pablobaz wrote:
| It goes deeper than that. Fundamental forces have
| chirality. This was a little controversial when first
| discovered.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Elephants are really smart, and also quite emotional. They have
| been known to grieve, for very long periods of time, upon the
| death of babies or partners. Most animals get over it, fairly
| quickly.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| There was even a situation where they sought revenge. There was
| one person that was allegedly a retired 70-yo poacher, And a
| herd stomped them to death. Then at the funeral the elephants
| marched in and threw the corpse around. Then they singled out
| and destroyed that person's home. The destruction and
| collateral damage was surprisingly minimal, so this was an
| extremely targeted attack.
|
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/toi-original/watc...
|
| So yeah, elephants truly never forget. And some will make it
| their life mission to right the wrongs.
| konschubert wrote:
| It says in the article right there that they also destroyed
| other houses.
|
| I call bs.
| mrleinad wrote:
| They probably intercepted communications between those
| other houses and the target, and determined they should
| also pay the price.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| If Monkey Hitman can be a TV show, then so can Mafia
| Elephants.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I did say "minimal", not "none". If I see a herd of a dozen
| elephants coming in a neighborhood, I'm sure expecting more
| than 1 house demolished with malice and 3 others damaged as
| collateral.
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's possible that the signal alerting them to where she
| lived, had also been present in the other homes (smell,
| visible trails, decorations, etc). Statistically, this a
| large number of rare events that coincided.
| konschubert wrote:
| A herd of elephants is aggressive. They trample an old
| woman who can run away as fast.
|
| People hide, but for the burial, they come out of their
| houses, make noise, alerting the elephants.
|
| Elephants get aggressive again. People run away.
| Elephants trample what they left behind.
|
| Them, Elephants also trample the village.
|
| Seems like a pretty likely scenario?
|
| Stuff happens!
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| There are so many implications to this story that are _wild_
| to think about.
|
| How did the elephants know generally where this person lived?
| How did they know specifically which house she lived in? How
| did they know there was a funeral to crash?
|
| I'd speculate that the answer is scouting, and the idea of
| elephants scouting for other elephants in a planned attack is
| _so damn cool_ that I just want to assume that must be the
| answer in the face of knowing that I 'm speculating.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I love two stories about elephants.
|
| The first one involves a group of elephants who formed a circle
| around their caretaker's home for a couple of days to grieve
| when he died.
|
| The second one involves an elephant who's shot at his head for
| poaching, he ran away to where forest rangers camp is, and just
| laid down to be taken care. The elephant survived.
|
| Animals are complex creatures and see, hear and know more than
| we think. We should stop acting so boneheaded, IMHO.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Those are wonderful stories, thanks for sharing them.
|
| I wonder though if generalizing to most/all animals really
| makes sense here.
|
| I get the sense that _these_ kinds of stories are mostly
| limited to highly social and fairly intelligent animals like
| elephants, dolphins, and dogs.
|
| Maybe other primates as well, although IIUC they're more
| likely to be spiteful to some people than are e.g. dogs and
| elephants.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I think it's less about a general truth and more about a
| general capacity for this behavior.
| lolinder wrote:
| Add cats to the list as well.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I'd happily add birds to the list. I had a budgerigar which
| lived for ~12 years. She had very personal traits. For
| example she always sat silent until she saw my eyes open,
| regardless of the hour. She always knew that I was the one
| I opened the door and sang very happily, again regardless
| of the time of the day. She liked to troll me and my
| parents. She ate the corners of my lecture notes, esp. if I
| didn't pay attention to her (exam periods), flicked a
| single CD from the stack, grabbed and threw down, studied
| how it fell, and chirped at me head sideways, trying to
| tell "look, I did something".
|
| I could write tons and tons of things where she was very
| aware of my emotions and responded to it, or communicated
| with my parents in their own way.
|
| So, I don't think it's limited only to "more complex"
| animals like dolphins, dogs, and elephants. Cats and birds
| (oh, look at cockatoos, crows magpies, etc.) are also in
| that group as well.
|
| Cockatoos raid trash bins and find ways to open even the
| blocked ones if their strength allows.
|
| Lastly, here's a parrot which trolls its owner and laughs
| about what it did! Oh boy, it's aware of what it did [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLNSaQCDl8E
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I wonder though if generalizing to most/all animals
| really makes sense here.
|
| What's the downside to just assuming all animals are
| intelligent and treating them as such?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| From my experience, you can add sparrows, pigeons, and
| other birds to this list.
|
| And if you include things I've read on Facebook, even
| jumping spiders.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is entirely possible that if elephants could speak and had
| versatile hands like we do, they would build a developed
| civilization. They certainly seem very intelligent and
| deliberate.
|
| A genetic project for the 21st century: try giving them voice
| and hands. See what happens.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| The hands would be crushed.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Maybe they could have fingers on their trunk. It is
| already strongly innervated and very sensitive.
| philistine wrote:
| You need to watch Babar. That's the blueprint for
| intelligent elephants.
| itishappy wrote:
| This is a plot point in one of my favorite sci-fi series:
| Schlock Mercenary.
|
| Elephants are one of the races that have been "uplifted" to
| sophistry. Some (Neophants) have been engineered further
| and now have hands.
|
| Check out the notes below the following two comics for some
| of the musings that make these stories so compelling to me:
|
| https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-06-16
|
| https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-05-07
| gus_massa wrote:
| Rats have like 6 babies every other month. Elephants need like
| 2 years for a new baby. You get much more attached to offspring
| when they take a long time and they survive for a few tens of
| years instead of a few months. Feelings get synchronized with
| the r/K strategy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
| tonyvince7 wrote:
| I am from south India where a lot of wild elephants roam the
| villages and towns. When elephants come to roam the streets most
| people lock themselves in their homes and alert the forest
| division authorities. Someone I know once rescued a baby elephant
| from a trap set for boars. Every year, a herd of elephants stop
| by his gate and leave presents - mostly bananas and coconuts.
| They wait for him to come out, make a friendly gesture - folding
| their trunks in a specific way, and leave peacefully. Our elders
| tell us that elephants have memory and show gratitude and they
| can hold a grudge so be respectful all the time.
| ourmandave wrote:
| _...and they can hold a grudge so be respectful all the time._
|
| It's like a 6000 lb raven.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| What a heartwarming story!
|
| Do you think it would be safe for him to approach that group
| and to touch them in a friendly way?
|
| I'm curious about their temperament regarding persons with whom
| that have some history.
| tonyvince7 wrote:
| Unlike the animals in the Zoo, the sight of a wild Asian
| elephant (males especially) with unaltered tusks is very
| intimidating. People don't dare to go near the wild ones even
| when they are friendly. The domesticated animals (ones used
| in temple proceedings) are a different story. They are still
| majestic but sadly in chains and strappings so people touch
| and feed them often. Google 'Pampadi Rajan' - name of a
| domesticated elephant
| tonyvince7 wrote:
| Can recommend watching this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc9aOdWJ-g
| illwrks wrote:
| Lovely story, and I think that is true for a lot of animals. I
| grew up around horses and saw very similar traits.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I wonder if there is a difference in this regard between Asian
| elephants and African elephants.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Reminds me of that story of the exact opposite where an
| elephant killed a woman. Then, showed up at her funeral and
| disrespected her corpse. THEN, brought friends and destroyed
| her house.
|
| No one really knows why, but the rumor was she was associated
| with a poaching group. Either way that elephant clearly hated
| this lady and made it known.
|
| https://www.fox26houston.com/news/elephant-kills-indian-woma...
| harhargange wrote:
| i remember seeing tiktoks where elephants show intelligent
| behavior so I am glad that tiktok is of some use.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| maybe someone knows the answer. how are elephants surviving
| german winters? can they withstand the cold or are they put
| inside for winter? that question popped in my mind. thanks
| rurban wrote:
| They are taken inside. Watching a lot of German zoo TV
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Dude. Even dogs get jealous of other dogs. How are we still in a
| time where we think animals don't have an inner life?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I think it would be overwhelming if we really acknowledged how
| sentient animals are.
|
| I'm being completely honest here, I believe pigs and cows are
| just as intelligent as dogs. They're simply limited by their
| physical bodies and our understanding of their expressions.
|
| But I still won't go vegan.
|
| On an intelligent level I believe it's wrong to inseminate cows
| so they produce milk, but I still won't stop drinking it.
| Because I am lazy and comfortable in my ways. And that's what I
| believe most people are, even if they won't admit to it.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I think acknowledging the simultaneous truths that there is
| terrible suffering in the world, and that we are meant to
| perpetuate that suffering, is just maturity and wisdom.
|
| Morality is an artificial instrument of social control that
| minimizes human wars. Otherwise, all creatures are here to
| kill and breed.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I beg to differ: all creatures are here to breed. I'll be
| surpised to ear about creatures that kill as an end instead
| of a mean but hey, there's still to discover.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| One in every ten thousand or so human males either kills
| other human beings for pleasure or would if they could.
| This may be specific to humans, but I wouldn't be too
| surprised to find that there are serial killers in other
| species. Or rather, would-be serial killers, because
| without tool use an animal would have to be a freakish
| outlier not only in terms of "psychopathy" but also in
| size and strength to be able to afford expending energy
| to kill another member of their species for no good
| reason.
| troyvit wrote:
| The way a dog behaviorist described it to me was, "A dog can
| feel jealous, but the dog doesn't _know_ that he/she feels
| jealous." I don't know if I believe that, but I've been
| pondering it for the last 20 years.
| ysavir wrote:
| Probably varies dog by dog, same as it varies human by human.
| Some people are intimately aware of their own jealousy, other
| need some form of therapy to make it apparent.
| generuso wrote:
| Dogs are amazing. And human brains/minds are without doubt
| even more complex than those of dogs. But it is typical for
| humans to not be aware of the true reasons of behaving or
| even feeling in the way they do.
|
| When asked about causes of our behavior, we readily make up
| an explanation, and we believe our own explanations
| completely whether they are true or false. There is a
| considerable literature demonstrating in an experimental
| setting how easily the behavior is controlled by the factors
| that are not consciously perceived, and how it is
| rationalized post factum in plausible but arbitrary ways.
| More informally, many fiction writers show characters, for
| example falling in love and showing that through their
| behavior, but refusing to admit that they are in love, even
| when explicitly confronted with the facts.
|
| Of course one can say that an adult human can at least in
| principle, sometimes, examine what is going on, while a dog
| is probably much less capable of such complex analysis and is
| more like a small child. This seems plausible.
| jancsika wrote:
| I'd argue that a) it takes _years_ for humans to develop the
| ability to be aware of their own jealousy, and b) some of us
| don 't ever get there.
| leftbit wrote:
| And they are able to show insight and planning to get what they
| want...
|
| Once a friend of our dog came visiting, grabbed his favorite
| stuffy and happily chewed it in the yard. Which our dog clearly
| resented.
|
| So he cleaned up the yard and hid all other toys in the house.
| Usually that's our job - he never bothers to look after his
| toys.
|
| Then he came out with an old tennis ball, pranced around,
| played with it, like "Dude, this is the BEST toy EVER invented.
| An it's mine."
|
| His friend dropped the coveted stuffy and came over to
| investigate... our dog dropped the ball, grabbed the stuffy and
| hid it in the house.
|
| His friend was left with a slimy, boring ball.
|
| I really can't think of any other explanation - he knew how to
| get his stuffy, but also anticipated this trick wouldn't work
| twice. So the cleanup in advance.
| leftbit wrote:
| Yes, that was clever.
|
| But he showed real intelligence by never doing anything like
| this in front of us ever again. ;)
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I remember a video from a camera someone set up in their
| home to see what their dog -- who was not allowed on the
| furniture -- did when they were gone. It may not be
| surprising that the video depicted the dog rolling around
| and rubbing itself on all of the furniture.
|
| It's a small wonder whether the dog did that when the owner
| was home!
| generuso wrote:
| That is a rare level of cunning!
|
| A simpler, somewhat common version is when one dog pretends
| that there is something interesting outside, so that the
| other dog would drop the toy and would run to the window
| hoping to bark at the mailman, while the trickster picks up
| the left behind toy.
|
| Some dogs actually learn to see through this ruse. It can be
| very amusing to watch them darting instinctively, then
| suddenly realizing what is about to happen, returning back to
| pick up the toy and only then going to the window more
| leisurely.
| PKop wrote:
| > "So Kaufman and her colleagues started to record the showering
| on video over the course of a year, testing how Mary reacted to
| changes in the setup."
|
| Just leave her alone.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| What was wrong with the title "Elephant learned to use a hose as
| a shower. Then her rival sought revenge"? Too similar to other
| submissions?
| lolinder wrote:
| It's long for HN and framed in a way that smacks of clickbait.
| I would have skipped right past that title, but this one works
| well.
|
| The submitted title is also part of the original title anyway.
| A lot of publications have a less clickbaity version as a
| subtitle that is meant to work equally well as a title, and
| it's pretty common on HN submissions to see people submit that
| other title because it usually represents the content better.
| That's pretty clearly what happened here.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Less clickbaity, sure, but it doesn't say elephant. Title was
| changed after submission. Nobody had any problem with it when
| it was submitted 3 days ago.
| lolinder wrote:
| Nobody saw it when it was submitted 3 days ago, most likely
| because the title smelled of pop sci clickbait and didn't
| get up votes.
|
| At the time of writing that post has 7 votes and one
| comment--"This is just so cool". This one has 154 votes and
| many substantive comments. That's quite the difference.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42089532
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I don't have a horse in this race but I could imagine a
| whole litany of reasons for one post doing better over
| another which have nothing to do with the title. Again,
| not trying to say one title is better than the other just
| that the argument given of "this post is doing better;
| therefore, the title is better" seems fallacious with so
| many potential confounding variables.
| lolinder wrote:
| Fair. It's possible it's causal, but yes, not a
| guarantee.
|
| The context and subtext you're missing is that OP gets on
| every article that was posted more than once to point to
| previous postings, identifying the new one as a "dupe".
| They seem to be of the opinion that each thread should
| exist exactly once (or, grudgingly, once per year). I
| responded because in that context they seemed to be
| implying that OP changed the title to avoid getting
| flagged as a duplicate, so I was explaining why that is
| unlikely--the portion of the title they used is just
| better for this audience.
|
| More generally, to me this is to me a classic example of
| why their idea of thread purity is wrong: the thread the
| other day did very poorly, whereas this thread reached a
| much wider audience. I don't really care why that was,
| but it's yet more proof that reposts are a good thing
| when the previous post fails to garner "significant
| attention". [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Ah, I did miss the subtext. I've noticed the [Dupe]
| comments on many threads and, to be fair, they're
| warranted most of the time I see them. As in, the same
| news was submitted multiple times within an hour of each
| submission and they're all getting a split discussion.
| It's worth noting that dang will usually combine the
| threads and leave a comment in the now-empty section with
| a link to the "winning" thread (heh, full circle,
| sometimes the agree-ability of the title is what decides
| the "winner").
|
| Anyway, back to the subtext, I agree that the repost
| seems to be warranted in this instance given the lack of
| discussion on the first post and presumably no "second
| chance" boost.
| ongytenes wrote:
| I remember reading in Nature of a young bull elephant charging a
| safari vehicle, frightening everyone. Just before he reached
| them, he dropped to his front knees and dug his tusks into the
| ground. Then he made rumbling noises similar to laughter and
| walked off.
| tolerance wrote:
| I've been waiting almost 4 hours to somehow bring up musth.
|
| That sounds like musth.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth
| mock-possum wrote:
| > Testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be on
| average 60 times greater than in the same elephant at other
| times (in specific individuals these testosterone levels can
| even reach as much as 140 times the normal).[10]
|
| Wild.
| ziofill wrote:
| I bet we are underestimating and misunderstanding animal
| intelligence by a lot. Animals are not lesser humans, they have
| other worlds.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| We even think other humans are stupid if they have different
| values or goals that we don't relate to. I think humans
| systematically underestimate animal intelligence because their
| goals are worldview are radically different.
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