Big Brain... Big Thoughts?

In the field of tool use and animal reasoning, researchers tend to focus on primates or, in recent years, avian species'. However, what about the rest of the animal kingdom? We all have heard that an elephant never forgets, but could this actually be a disadvantage?

Moti Nissani (2006), in association with Wayne State University, conducted two experiments with asian elephants to test their causal reasoning skill; that is, the ability to determine a causal relationship. To test this, in both experiments elephants were pertained to retrieve food from a bucket. They were then presented with a bucket that had a lid, from which they were supposed to remove the lid, then retrieve the food. The second experiment also had some elephants retrieving food from a depression in the ground covered by a box rather than food from inside a lidded bucket.

This is where the two experiments differ. In both cases, the lid or box was set to the side of the bucket or depression respectively. If causal reasoning were evident, the elephants would ignore the lid or box and retrieve the food directly, demonstrating the understanding of the lid or box as the obstruction keeping them from their food.

However, all four elephants from the first trial still tossed or touched the lid of the bucket before retrieving the food. This suggests that rather than possessing the causal reasoning skills to determine it was the lid preventing them from retrieving the food, they had, through associative learning, paired moving the lid with receiving a reward.

The experiments differ, aside from the difference in the apparatus, in that in the four elephants from the first trial and eight of the eleven elephants from the second experiment participated in an average of 840.7 discrimination trials after the initial training and the experimental displacement of the lid or box trials. The experimenter's theorized that this may have ingrained the sequence in a manner similar to functional fixedness or belief perseverance.

To test this theory, the three remaining elephants from experiment two moved straight to the experimental trials after achieving the initial food retrieval task without undergoing any additional discrimination trials.

However, all eleven of the elephants in experiment two, regardless of how many trials of lid removal they conducted, still moved or tossed the lid or box before retrieving the food, even though it no longer blocked their access to it.

This suggests that the elephants lacked the causal reasoning skills to determine the lid or box was what was causing them to be unable to access the food. Rather, through associative learning, they paired moving the lid or box with receiving a reward.

However, while the elephants from this experiment lack causal reasoning skills, that does not mean elephants are incapable of other types of cognitive tasks, such as insight. In fact, the Smithsonian National Zoological Park has conducted studies in which elephants are able to preform insight tasks much like the monkeys accessing bananas hanging from the ceiling.

This just goes to show that while some animals are adept at certain tasks they fail at others, just as where one student excels another might fail. One must look at every animal and determine its capabilities to truly understand the depths of animal cognition.

References

Asian elephants. World Wildlife Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/

Curious Cat Travel. (n.d.). Insightful Problem Solving by an Asian Elephant. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkkkXsg8RMk

Nissani, M. (2006). Do asian elephants ( Elephas maximus) apply causal reasoning to tool-use tasks?. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ripon.idm.oclc.org/docview/614440003/

        fulltext/88D971D6B75D4F62PQ/1?accountid=9525

WildFilmsIndia. (n.d.). Elephant munching and eating food from the bucket. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0XIEY49_R0