Elephants are one of the smartest animals, possessing self-awareness and metacognition, an extreme rarity in the animal kingdom. They are one of the few species to make art and mourn and bury their dead. That they have unique identifiers is not a surprise at all.
Assuming that the videos are real, elephants on zoos had being recorded painting scenes on canvasses that aren't completely abstract. They are trained to paint to please visitors, but curiously they seem to enjoy drawing trees.
Is not clear to me if they just parrot the training or really try to send a message or draw some scene that they find instinctively pleasant. (but wouldn't be strange having in mind their intelligence).
Why is that controversial, the ability to recognize a map and handle the revealed absteaction via a zoom slider is a great tool to observe cognitive flexibility..
What’s very remarkable is that elephants like human seem to invent abstract names; other animals like dolphins mimic the signature sound of another to attract their attention.
The other animals have nicknamed the elephant "Two Tails", and it explains that it is afraid in battle because it can think about what happens when a shell bursts, and ruminates upon whether it might not be better off back at home in the forest rather than here in the army...
Not surprised. These animals are fascinating. We're not even sure we have caught everything from their language; maybe it's not just sound-based, and the way they shake their trump and ears or they dance counts a lot as well. I've long wondered if some of them developed some religions or even if they've overcome this need, reserving it to humans only.
Another study already showed that some monkeys have vocal words to designate a tiger and an eagle and use that to make all the group go up or down in the tree depending where the threat comes from. Elephants being more complex animals also living in groups are quite likely to have an even more elaborated language.
