14 DAY TRIAL // A recent paper in the journal Current Biology argues that, from a cognitive standpoint, elephants resemble humans much more than previously believed.
Thus, researchers say that, apart from living in complex social groups much like we do, these animals are able to figure out what pointing is all about without having to undergo any previous training.
Specifically, investigations have shown that, when seeing a human point at something, an elephant has little difficulties understanding that the two-legged creature standing in front of it is trying to direct its attention to something.
Interestingly enough, it appears that primates, whom many consider our closest relatives, are unable to understand pointing when it is done by human caretakers, and not by one of their own, EurekAlert tells us.
Commenting on the discovery that elephants can easily get the gist of human pointing, researcher Richard Byrne with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland stated as follows:
“By showing that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so, we have shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates.”
“Elephants are cognitively much more like us than has been realized, making them able to understand our characteristic way of indicating things in the environment by pointing. This means that pointing is not a uniquely human part of the language system,” he added.