Date: November 5, 2015
Source: BioMed Central
Two captive elephants blast air
through their trunks to grasp hard-to-reach food, suggests an initial study
published today in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. This behaviour,
studied in a zoo population of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), is altered according to the distance to the food,
which may indicate advanced mental ability and awareness of their physical
environment.
Previous observations, including
by Charles Darwin, have suggested that elephants may manipulate their breath to
reach inaccessible food, but there has been limited opportunity to test this
behaviour in an experimental setting. To investigate whether elephants use this
behaviour to achieve goals, scientists from SOKENDAI (The Graduate University
for advanced studies) and Kyoto University studied two female captive
elephants, Mineko and Suzuko, at Kamine Zoo in Japan. They predicted that the
further away a piece of food was, the more frequently the elephants would blast
it with air to bring it near to them.
To test this theory, the team of
researchers digitally mapped out a grid in a ditch in the elephants' enclosure,
placed food in various locations on the 'virtual' grid, and filmed the
elephants trying to reach it. They used five different types of food: apple,
bamboo, hay, fallen leaves and potatoes. The researchers recorded the
elephants' behaviour over 32 days, spilt into 128 trials; a trial began when it
was audible that the elephants had started blowing and finished when they
grasped the food or gave up. They then analysed the frequency and duration of
blowing, the position and shape of the elephants' trunks, and their success and
skill by tracking the movement of food across the grid.
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