Elephant Personhood - Interesting article

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From Veronika Terrian, Vegetarian Network of Dallas College Coordinator. Posted with her permission. MargaretELEPHANT PERSONHOOD?(THIS IS FROM A WEBSITE ---SITE IS NOTED AT END) Summarising a 26-page article, 'An exploration of a commonality between ourselves and elephants' by Joyce H. Poole, one of many excellent pieces in the book Non-human personhood (published by Etica & Animali 9/98; edited by Paola Cavalieri, Corso Magenta 62, 20123 Milano, Italy, tel 00 39 02 481 5514; e-mail: gap_etica). The Institute for Social Inventions gave its major award in 1993 to the 'Great Ape Project' (see: www.globalideasbank.org/socinv/SIC-82.HTML) which tries to secure legal rights for the more advanced primates such as apes, chimpanzees and gorillas by scientifically arguing for their astounding similarity to the human being and for their human-related attributes such as consciousness and intentionality. This type of research has now been extended to include other animals including dolphins and elephants. In a fascinating article, Joyce H. Poole, intimately involved with the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya and responsible for running Kenya's elephant conservation programme, has documented several ways in which elephant and human behaviour are similar and has argued persuasively for the

inclusion of elephants in the category of conscious and intelligent 'mind-havers'. 'Elephants have complex emotions' Elephants have a complexly organised social life and structure. They also have complex emotions. Upon meeting, for example, members of a family or bond group greet one another with a special vocalisation known as a greeting rumble. When individuals have been separated for a long time, perhaps days or even weeks, the greeting becomes pandemonium: members rush together with heads high, ears folded and flapping loudly, as they spin around urinating and defecating, and secreting profusely from their temporal glands. During all of this physical activity the elephants call in unison with a deafening sequence of greeting rumbles, roars and social trumpets.

The intensity of the greeting ceremony depends upon several factors including the number of individuals involved, the strength of the relationships between them and the duration of their separation. They also experience pain and suffering, depression, sadness and grief. For example, in Amboseli, the author also witnessed a female stand guard over her stillborn baby for three days. After attempting to revive her baby by lifting him, she simply stood by his side. During that time she displayed both postural and facial expressions similar to a grief-stricken, depressed person: her head and ears hung down, the corners of her mouth were turned down and she was very quiet

and slow in her movements. Mothers with dead or dying babies exhibit the same behaviour. 'They wake up screaming with nightmares' Daphne Sheldrick, who raises orphaned baby elephants in Kenya, states that one of the first hurdles to these orphans' survival is for them to overcome their grief. Many of these orphans witnessed their mothers being killed by poachers and during the early days at the orphanage they wake up screaming with what Sheldrick interprets to be nightmares. The wide range of vocal signals used by elephants seem to

indicate that they communicate with each other. Some of the calls used by African elephants, such as the 'let's go' rumble, appear to function as a word. Researchers have also observed elephants involved in what appear to be 'discussions'. Adult females rumble back and forth with the cadence of a conversation, often during situations where the individuals seem to be in disagreement about their intended route or activity. Females also use a 'comment rumble' following a wide variety of events (for example, a typical event, such as the author's arrival, or an unusual, exciting or frightening experience, such as a helicopter, a fight between two musk males, the kidnapping of an infant by other elephants or an interaction with a predator). The contexts in which females use the comment rumble are so varied that the author thinks it is likely we may find that subtle acoustic differences exist between them. Of all animals, elephants are high up on the list of those which have intelligence. They have relatively large, complex and slowly maturing brains. They learn skills and have legendary memories. There are also numerous anecdotal examples of captive elephants using apparently reasoned thought to solve problems. For example, in Burma, J. H. Williams described how young domesticated elephants developed the 'naughty habit' of plugging up the wooden bell they wore around their necks with mud or clay so that the clappers could not ring, in order to steal silently at night into a grove of cultivated bananas. In India a working elephant named Chandrasekharan had been asked to place poles in pre-dug holes. He continued to follow his mahout's command until he reached one particular hole when he simply refused to insert the pole. When the mahout examined the hole he found a sleeping dog at the bottom. Only after the dog had been removed would the elephant place the pole into the hole. In another case, a captive elephant who had been chained so that he could not reach dry land was observed to break branches from a tree and place them under his feet that were sinking into the mud. The branches supported him until his mahout returned.

Numerous examples of apparent reasoning have also been observed in wild elephants. In South Africa, an elephant was observed to dig a hole in a riverbed; after drinking from it, he stripped bark from a nearby tree, chewed it into a large ball, plugged the hole and covered it with sand. Later he removed the sand, unplugged the hole and drank again. In Amboseli, the

author watched two females attempting to rescue a newborn who was stuck in a steep-sided mud wallow. The mother worked for perhaps half an hour using her tusks to dig at the bank. She was agitated, however, and her work was erratic and unhelpful. Then her sister entered the mud wallow and worked methodically, removing earth with her tusks to lessen the slope and then, with her trunk and forefeet, assisted the baby out of the wallow. In the course of their work, officials frequently come across similar instances of apparently reasoned thought by elephants. For example, around many forest reserves moats have been dug to prevent elephants from reaching tree plantations, and elephants simply cave in the sides, shovelling the earth with their tusks and turning the steep sides into gentle slopes to make the crossing easy. 'Adult

females actually lift their babies over low electric fences' Several rangers and fence maintenance crews have told the author that they have witnessed adult females actually lift their babies over low electric fences that they themselves can clamber over.Elephants also disable electric fences by uprooting trees and pushing them onto the fence, or by dropping logs or large rocks onto the live wire causing it to sag onto the earth wire thus shorting the fence. Using tools As some of these descriptions indicate, there are examples of apparently reasoning involving the use of 'tools'. Among the 4,000+ non-primate species of mammals only four belonging to four genera (the two elephant species, polar bears and sea otters) have been repeatedly reported to use tools, and 19 species belonging

to 14 genera have been reported to use tools occasionally. Elephants have been cited as using tools with the highest frequency and diversity of any non-primate mammal. Tool use among elephants is a learned skill. It is hard to say how often tool use is learned by chance, through social learning, by true imitation or as a result of reasoned thought. 'They have been observed to make a pile of logs and stand on top of the heap so as to reach branches' They have been observed to: hold a stick in their trunks in order to drag closer food that was out of reach; open faucets, and once these were bolted closed, use rocks to break the nuts loose from the bolts; throw tyres onto nearby branches in order to weight them down to a level where they could feed; and make a pile of logs and stand on top of the heap so as to reach branches that would be otherwise out of

grasp. They have been seen using a log as a lever to pry open a retaining wall. When keepers stopped this behaviour by laying a strip of spikes on the ground as a barrier instead, the elephants gathered more logs and built a bridge across the spikes. During observations of wild elephants the author has on numerous occasions witnessed them to: use a stick to remove ectoparasites from the body; pick up and wave a palm frond or other vegetation over the body to get rid of insects; hold grass or other vegetation and use it to rub an eye or ear to relieve an itch; pick up and brandish or throw sticks, bones, rocks, logs, branches, etc, at individuals whom they are trying to intimidate; and pick up and return by throwing objects tossed to them in play including shoes, sticks, elephant dung, etc. There are also

numerous examples of cultural transmission of knowledge, ie the passing of information from one generation to the next by non-genetic means, within elephant communities. Many of the skills described above may be learned from others.One of the most commonly cited examples of knowledge passing from older to younger elephants, however, is the locating of seasonal water holes and traditional migration routes and of underground water used during extreme periods of drought. One of the concerns raised by the severe levels of poaching which took place in the 1970s and 1980s was that in some areas entire older age cohorts were killed leaving families without such stored knowledge. Another example of culturally transmitted behaviour among wild elephants is the way in which elephants learn to disable electric fences and pass on this knowledge. Two 'golden rules' of fencing are: to ensure the

initial configuration is correct and to keep up regular maintenance. The reason for these is that where poor designs are used and where maintenance is lax, individual elephants learn more easily to break through (using the tips of their tusks to break the wires or their hind feet to push over the posts, simply rushing through between pulses, or dropping logs or pushing trees on top of their wires). This knowledge is then observed and learned by other individuals, so that even when a good system is installed the elephants continue to break through. 'Even playback stimuli of Maasai voices will cause families to flee, while they ignore the sound of tourists' Elephants, like other animals, learn from one another what to fear. For example, in Amboseli where Maasai occasionally spear elephants, elephants learn through example to run from the sight and smell of Maasai. Even playback stimuli of Maasai voices or cattle bells will cause families to flee, while they ignore the sight, sound and smell of tourists. In Tsavo National Park where, in the late 1980s, elephants were killed by poachers in collusion with rangers driving Toyota Land Cruisers, they rapidly learned from one another to run from the sound of Land Cruisers. In southern Africa where elephants are killed from helicopters, even those who have not experienced the loss of

relatives, learn from one another to fear the approaching sound. Is there any evidence that elephants are self-aware beings, conscious of their own acts and affections? One of the strongest arguments in support of self-awareness is an elephant's apparent understanding of death. Much has been written about the reaction of elephants to the injury or death of a member of their own species or even to the presence of elephant tusks and bones.Elephants will attempt to raise an immobilised, injured, dying or dead elephant and they will sometimes try to feed a dying elephant or cover a dead elephant with vegetation. They have been known to pick up a part of a scientific collection of lower jaws, return bones to the original site of an elephant's death, and move and bury scores of elephant feet and ears that were drying after a 'culling operation'. They are particularly interested in tusks and

have been observed to carry these away. The behaviour of elephants around their dead or around elephant bones is silent, gentle and contemplative. Their reaction appears in many ways to be very human and their behaviour leaves the author with little doubt that they have some understanding of death. D. Birnbacher argues that since one's death is always in the future, the badness of dying cannot be explained by its being experienced as bad, it can only be shown by the fear of death a practice of killing produces in beings capable of having the thought of their own death. Fear of death presupposes a capacity to think of one's own death, and that presupposes self-consciousness and consciousness of one's life as a limited whole. Do elephants fear death? Behavioural reactions of elephants to poachers, and to the sound of

helicopters involved in 'culling operations', and their obvious knowledge of locations where they are safe and where they are not, is strong evidence elephants do fear their own death. Perhaps the strongest example of this behaviour occurred in Zimbabwe one year during the then annual elephant 'cull' in Hwange National Park. On the day that the killing began inside the park, 60 miles away in a neighbouring sanctuary some 80 elephants ran and hid fearfully in the farthest corner of the reserve. They remained in hiding for the duration of the killing and then returned. Presumably they either heard the helicopters' loud, low frequency sounds or they were informed of the danger via a chain of elephant groups using loud, very low frequency, long

distance calls. 'An elephant jammed a rusted tin on the end of her tusk and ran around and around her car' The author has also witnessed behaviour among wild elephants which she believes indicates a sense of humour. When elephants play they often draw the corners of their mouths up in what she calls a 'smile', and they waggle their head and ears in a particular manner that she has interpreted as a sign of 'amusement'. She once initiated a game with a young elephant by 'play trumpeting' at her.Eleven other elephants eventually joined their game and, apparently as a consequence of the author's involvement, the elephants behaved in a totally absurd manner. Some elephants walked backwards toward her, and kicked dust in the air with their hind legs. One tried to sit on the bonnet of her car, another put her tusks in the window above her

head, and a third jammed a rusted tin on the end of her tusk and ran around and around her car. The game lasted for perhaps 15 minutes. Two of the participants apparently remembered her involvement for more than two years after the event, and when they met the elephants approached her car, drew the corners of their mouths up in a 'smile' and waggled their heads at her. She interpreted their behaviour to mean that they recognised her, remembered her involvement in their play, and thought that it was funny. A remarkable story was related by D. H. Chadwick about an elephant named Bertha who 'worked' at the Nugget Casino in Reno, Nevada. Showgirls had to walk past Bertha on their way to the dressing room, and she sometimes tried to get them to give her a sugar cube from a nearby locked cabinet. They had all been told to tell her 'no'. But Bertha could apparently pick out new employees among them, and she would take them firmly by the hand and lead them to where the key hung on the wall. There the women's hands would stay until they figured out that they were to open the cabinet. Was Bertha actually able to attribute knowledge and ignorance among the women? A theory of mind, mind reading or attribution can be defined as the ability to recognise states of mind in oneself or others. Over the last decade and a half significant progress has been made in understanding the mind

of great apes, and it is generally acknowledged that while the chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans can attribute states of mind, monkeys show significantly lesser abilities. Theory of mind is seen as a great step in the evolution of intelligence. Empathy, intentional deceit, pretend play, teaching and imitation are taken as some of the behaviours that indicate the ability to mindread or attribute states of mind to others. Is there any evidence that elephants can recognise states of mind? Empathy, the ability to be vicariously affected by someone else's feelings and situation, and sympathy, the impulse to do something about it, are pillars of human morality and yet both are not uncommonly observed in elephants. Elephants appear to excel at compassionate and succorant behaviour. Although the majority of such behaviour concerns kin, and could be interpreted as caused simply by investment in

genetic relatives, not all such behaviour is directed toward kin. Also, while kin selection is a valid argument when it comes to evolutionary explanations, it does not explain the motivation. Elephants will attempt to physically support and lift an injured or dying companion. So strong is this tendency among family groups that when an individual is to be immobilised (for radio collaring, treatment, etc) care must be taken to chase all other elephants away. 'Two adult females rush to the aid of a darted female, supporting her in a standing position' The author watched two adult females rush to the aid of a darted female, supporting her in a standing position, by pressing their bodies on either side against hers. Their behaviour kept her standing, until the humans were able to chase them away, and the female collapsed. This sort of response could

not have been learnt through conditioning. The elephants assessed the problem, felt the urge to assist and found what they believed to be an 'appropriate' solution. Recently, naturalist Tony Archer witnessed an example of apparent sympathy in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. Associated with a family group was a teenage female with a withered right hind leg upon which she could put no weight. A young male arrived from a different group and began attacking this handicapped female, tusking her repeatedly in the backside. The crippled female tried to get away but could not move fast enough. Suddenly, a large adult female came rapidly from the original group, now about

40 metres ahead, and chased away the attacking male. Having seen him off she returned to the young female and touched her crippled leg gently with her trunk. It is likely that the large female was a relative of the crippled female, thus an argument could be made that the special defence of the crippled elephant was based on learned adjustment. However, the fact that she reached over and touched the young female's leg showed that she understood her specific handicap. Though learned adjustment may have played a role in the large female's response, the author believes her behaviour also showed cognitive empathy and sympathy. 'Elephant mind' Long-term studies have documented the complex social and emotional lives of elephants and their elaborate vocal repertoire. The evidence thus far suggests that elephants are thinking and intelligent beings,

able to reason and reflect and capable of conceptual and abstract thought. The evidence available on cognitive empathy, understanding death, sense of humour, imagination, the ability to teach, to imitate and to deceive, are all very suggestive that elephants have a theory of mind. We are perhaps poised to make some fundamental discoveries about the minds of elephants that may change the way we view animal minds in general. The moral progression that is slowly taking us beyond racism and subjugation of our fellow humans will, in time, come to include other species too. The great ape project has already made significant strides, and it would be surprising if elephants, closely and carefully observed, don't help to show us the way. For further information about the Great Ape Project see also the web (at: www.greatapeproject.org). http://www.globalideasbank.org/inspir/INS-114.HTML Veronika Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. We must be the change that we wish

to see in the world... *Mahatma Gandhi

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