wow! maybe you've seen this before but it's a first for me and very cool. Elephants painting pictures!

http://www.youtube.com/wa...e7Ge7Sogrk

ugh...I don't know how to get youtube stuff to come up in the post.

Shorty said:

wow! maybe you've seen this before but it's a first for me and very cool. Elephants painting pictures!

ugh...I don't know how to get youtube stuff to come up in the post.

There you go!

Is that real?

[Edited 9/3/10 8:45am]

Shorty said:

wow! maybe you've seen this before but it's a first for me and very cool. Elephants painting pictures!

ugh...I don't know how to get youtube stuff to come up in the post.

ahh thank you lisa and purplejedi!

yes..it's real there's a bunch on youtube you can check out. it's some elephant sanctuary in Thialand.

Shorty said:

ahh thank you lisa and purplejedi!

yes..it's real there's a bunch on youtube you can check out. it's some elephant sanctuary in Thialand.

I sometimes wonder if some of the higher mammals (elephants, whales, etc.) can be sentient beings but have yet to be able to express it?

Woop-tee-doo

Lola makes Organic Sculpture.

[img:$uid]http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i9/jgascot/2007_10060001.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 9/3/10 9:25am]

PurpleJedi said:

Shorty said:

ahh thank you lisa and purplejedi!

yes..it's real there's a bunch on youtube you can check out. it's some elephant sanctuary in Thialand.

I sometimes wonder if some of the higher mammals (elephants, whales, etc.) can be sentient beings but have yet to be able to express it?

to be able to express it to us that is.

I agree

johnart said:

Woop-tee-doo

Lola makes Organic Sculpture.

[img:$uid]http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i9/jgascot/2007_10060001.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 9/3/10 9:25am]

eww

the portland, OR zoo features a display of works completed by one of the resident elephants.

very cool!

Shorty said:

johnart said:

Woop-tee-doo

Lola makes Organic Sculpture.

[img:$uid]http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i9/jgascot/2007_10060001.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 9/3/10 9:25am]

eww

She's not feelin the love.

YEAH HE REALLY NEEDED TO CONCENTRATE.......BUT WHAT WHAT DA HALL I KNOW??

I've never actually seen a show on these. Just the short videos.

Do they know what they are painting? Is it expression or are they trained/coreographed, as in a circus act? Not that it's not amazing either way.

johnart said:

I've never actually seen a show on these. Just the short videos.

Do they know what they are painting? Is it expression or are they trained/coreographed, as in a circus act? Not that it's not amazing either way.

I bet they are trained to paint what they paint, but the amazing part to me was when it went over one of its brush strokes to make it darker.. This was a while after it had made the original stroke... Did it "notice" it needed to be darker? Animals really are amazing!

tinaz said:

johnart said:

I've never actually seen a show on these. Just the short videos.

Do they know what they are painting? Is it expression or are they trained/coreographed, as in a circus act? Not that it's not amazing either way.

I bet they are trained to paint what they paint, but the amazing part to me was when it went over one of its brush strokes to make it darker.. This was a while after it had made the original stroke... Did it "notice" it needed to be darker? Animals really are amazing!

Well, there's the precision also. It went over it very precisely.

Elephant intelligence is pretty incredible, actually. Elephants in captivity is actually one of the things I hate most about zoos (which I actually think can do some really good work). As with all intelligent species, there's all kinds of stuff we don't know about what's goin' on in their big ol' melons. But for what we do know (or think we know), the Elephant intelligence Wiki page is actually very well written. I've just included a few passages below. I'll start with what it says about the Elephant "art".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence

Like several other species, elephants are able to produce abstract art using their trunks to hold brushes. An example of this was shown in the TV program 'Extraordinary Animals', where elephants at a camp in Thailand were able to draw a ' self portrait' with flower - see link for the case of 'Hong': [1]. Although the images are drawn by the elephants, there is always a human person assisting and guiding the movement.^{[citation needed]} From those presentations it cannot be definitely evaluated, whether the elephants are conscious about the shape of their drawings or not.^{[dubious – discuss]}

This extraordinary video documentation of an elephant painting a picture of an elephant - possibly indicating self-awareness - has become widespread on internet news and video websites.^[38] The quality of the painting is extremely high, leading many astonished viewers to doubt the video's authenticity. The website snopes.com, which specializes in debunking urban legends, lists the video as "true", in that the elephant produced the brush strokes, but notes that the similarity of the produced paintings is indicative of a learned sequence of strokes rather than a creative effort on the part of the elephant.

__________________________________________________________

Elephants are amongst the world's most intelligent species. With a mass just over 5 kg (11 lb), elephant brains are larger than those of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twentyfold those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. The elephant’s brain is similar to that of humans in terms of structure and complexity - such as the elephant’s cortex having as many neurons as a human brain , suggesting convergent evolution. A wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, art, play, a sense of humor, altruism, use of tools, compassion, self-awareness, memory and possibly language all point to a highly intelligent species that are thought to be equal with cetaceans and primates . Due to the high intelligence and strong family ties of elephants, some researchers argue it is morally wrong for humans to cull them.

The elephant (both Asian and African) has a very large and highly convoluted neocortex, a trait also shared by humans, apes and certain dolphin species. Scientists see this as a sign of complex intelligence. Asian elephants have the greatest volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing of all existing land animals. Elephants have a volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing that exceeds that of any primate species, and extensive studies place elephants in the category of great apes in terms of cognitive abilities for tool use and tool making. The elephant brain exhibits a gyral pattern more complex and with more numerous convolutes/brain folds than that of humans, primates and carnivores, but less complex than cetaceans. However, the cortex of the elephant brain is "thicker than that of cetaceans", and is believed to have as many cortical neurons (nerve cells) and cortical synapses as that of humans which exceeds that of cetaceans. Elephants are believed to rank equal with dolphins in terms of problem solving abilities and many scientists tend to rank elephant intelligence at the same level as cetaceans.

Elephants also have a very large and highly convoluted hippocampus, a brain structure in the limbic system that is much bigger than that of any human, primate or cetacean. The hippocampus of an elephant takes up about 0.7% of the central structures of the brain, comparable to 0.5% for humans and with 0.1% in Risso’s dolphins and 0.05% in bottlenose dolphins. The hippocampus is linked to processing emotion and memory. This is thought to possibly be why elephants suffer from psychological flashbacks and the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Like humans, elephants must learn behavior as they grow up. They are not born with the instincts of how to survive. Elephants have a very long period in their lives for learning, lasting for around ten years. One comparative way to try to gauge intelligence is to compare brain size at birth to the fully developed adult brain. This indicates how much learning a species accumulates while young. The majority of mammals are born with a brain close to 90% of the adult weight. Humans are born with 28% of the adult weight, bottlenose dolphins with 42.5%, chimpanzees with 54%, and elephants with 35%. This indicates that elephants have the highest amount of learning to undergo next to humans and behavior is not mere instinct but must be taught throughout life. It should be noted that instinct is quite different from learned intelligence. Parents will teach their young how to feed, use tools and learn their place in highly complex elephant society. The cerebrum temporal lobes, which functions as storage of memory are much larger than that of a human^.

Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress. In India, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout (elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to investigate the hold up and noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.

Elephants in Africa will self-medicate by chewing on the leaves of a tree from the Boraginaceae family, which induces labor. Kenyans also use this tree for the same purpose^.

Elephants are the only other species upon Earth other than humans and Neanderthals^[31] known to have any recognizable ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind (even unrelated elephants that have died long ago). They are often seen gently investigating the bones with their trunks and feet, and remaining very quiet. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves.^[9] When an elephant is hurt, other elephants (also even if they are unrelated) will aid them.

Elephants are able to spend a lot of time working on problems. They are able to radically change their behavior to face a new challenge, a hallmark of complex intelligence.

______________________________________________________

Asian Elephants have joined a small group of animals, including great apes, bottlenose dolphins and magpies, that exhibit self awareness. The study was conducted with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) using elephants at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Although many animals will respond to a mirror, very few show any evidence that they recognize it is in fact themselves in the mirror reflection.

The Asian elephants in the study also displayed this type of behavior when standing in front of a 2.5m-by-2.5m mirror - they inspected the rear and brought food close to the mirror for consumption.

Evidence of elephant self awareness was shown when the elephant Happy repeatedly touched a painted "X" on her head with her trunk, a mark which could only be seen in the mirror. Happy ignored another mark made with colourless paint that was also on her forehead to ensure she was not merely reacting to a smell or feeling.

Frans De Waal, who ran the study stated, "These parallels between humans and elephants suggest a convergent cognitive evolution possibly related to complex sociality and cooperation."^[41]

Joyce Poole, of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, Kenya, has demonstrated vocal learning and imitation in elephant of sounds made by each other and in the environment. She is beginning to research whether sounds made by elephants have dialects, a trait that is rare in the animal kingdom.

Astonishing Elephant video, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a64JEtZMVUc

.

[Edited 9/5/10 16:47pm]

JustErin said:

it made me sad too

it's beneath them

I felt sad too watching the dolphins at sea world

they keep them hungry so they do tricks

and they are just way too amazing to do that to

GirlBrother said:

Astonishing Elephant video, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a64JEtZMVUc

.

[Edited 9/5/10 16:47pm]

2 elephants 1 cup.

johnart said:

2 elephants 1 cup.

I know!!!

johnart said:

2 elephants 1 cup.

That description actually stopped me from watching the video.

ZombieKitten said:

JustErin said:

it made me sad too

it's beneath them

I felt sad too watching the dolphins at sea world

they keep them hungry so they do tricks

and they are just way too amazing to do that to

Shorty said:

ZombieKitten said:

it made me sad too

it's beneath them

I felt sad too watching the dolphins at sea world

they keep them hungry so they do tricks

and they are just way too amazing to do that to

well....if this were from a zoo I'd be kinda sad too but from my understanding it's a rescue camp in Thialand. These elephants would probably be dead or enslaved if they weren't rescued and kept here. I do believe they are taught to paint but that to me doesn't take away from it.

If I tried to hand either one of my cats a paint brush they would look at me sideways and swat at it like, "time to play?"

His work is wholly derivative and jejune.

that's amazing. I have seen elephats paint lots of times, but their paintings never actually looked like anything

Ace said:

His work is wholly derivative and jejune.

Cerebus said:

johnart said:

2 elephants 1 cup.

That description actually stopped me from watching the video.

OK OK 2 elephants 1 trunk. Just watch it. You'll be glad you did.

Lollipops and sunshine! Nice video.