Elephants perceive the meaning of point
Humans point to articles without giving much attention to the gesture, which is complex. To stretch a finger, we give other people the ability to know what we mean. When scientists test this capability in other species, realize that understand the gesture of pointing is a rare gift in the animal Kingdom. However, Richard Byrne, biologist at the University of St Andrews, and the student Anna Smet claim to have discovered a wild animal who realizes the meaning of pointing: the elephant.The study in question raises the possibility of the elephants have a deep social intelligence rivaling that of humans, in some ways. The researchers used a simple but effective test, to see if the animals understand the gesture of pointing-put food in one of two identical containers and then silently pointed to what was the food.While the majority of primates and other animals undergoing the test fail, some run with success â€" in the case of domesticated mammals. The dogs turned out to be especially good at understanding the gesture.But in the mid-2000, Byrne began to question whether the elephants could also pass the test. The logical path would perform the test point with the elephants and that's what the pair did last year.Anna Smet traveled to Zimbabwe, where a company called Wild Horizons offers safaris with elephants. Every morning, each animal watching Smet putting pieces of fruit in one of two equal buckets through a screen, without realizing who was receiving the content. Then Smet brought the buckets to the animal and pointed to what was in the fruit.During two months, Smet repeated the test with 11 elephants. When they analyzed the data later, researchers realized that the animals chose the bucket right side 67.5% of the time. These followed Smet both if she extended the entire arm as the hand only. And when she simply stood between the buckets, without aim, the elephants were playing us at random.According to the New York Times, scientists rule out the hypothesis that animals have learned to associate the gesture of pointing to food over the tests, since they were successful from the beginning of the experiment.Byrne and Smet intend to now investigate whether wild elephants also point to each other. "This makes us want to review the Visual signals of elephants to elephants," said Smet.Byrne also proved wondering if other highly social mammals manage to pass the test of point-whales and dolphins are at the top of your list.
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