Re: Elephant intelligence (o/t) (edit)

I am not sure if it is the same video we say, did they use dung-cams?

I just appended it to my blog, here it is:


Wikipedia also has some interesting quotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence

In fact I suspect this is the documentary you saw (quoting from there):

The elephant has one of the most closely knit societies of any living species. Elephant families can only be separated by death or capture. Cynthia Moss, an elephant researcher, recalls an event involving a family of African elephants. Two members of the family were shot by poachers, who were subsequently chased off by the remaining elephants. Although one of the elephants died, the other, named Tina, remained standing but with knees beginning to give way. Two family members, Trista and Teresia (Tina’s mother) walked to both sides of Tina and leaned in to hold her up. Alas, Tina was so weak she fell to the ground and died. However, Trista and Teresia did not give up but continually tried to lift her. They managed to get Tina into a sitting position, but her body was lifeless and fell to the ground again. As the other elephant family members became more intensely involved in the aid, they tried to put grass into Tina’s mouth. Teresia then put her tusks beneath Tina’s head and front quarters and proceeded to lift her. As she did so, her right tusk broke completely off, right up to the lip and nerve cavity. The elephants gave up trying to lift Tina but didn’t leave her; instead, they began to bury her in a shallow grave and throw leaves over her body. They stood over Tina for the night, and then began to leave in the morning. The last to leave was Teresia[17].

(edit) I looked carefully at the way the elephant painted the picture. The brush strokes were well thought out and the perspective and 3d were correct. Use of the canvas was well thought out. There were also attempts to correct brush stroke errors on the belly, or so it seems. I don't think you can train an animal to do that. It has to be artistic thought, I think. Amazing I think.