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A comment on Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to call them.

Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by DEADMINCE on Monday June 10, 2024 @08:25PM (#40640905)
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.
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by JumpCrisscross on Monday June 10, 2024 @08:55PM (#40641082)
> one of the few species to make art

Source?

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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by defrost on Monday June 10, 2024 @09:07PM (#40641155)
They're also one of the few species to build roads and bridges.

I suspect the quiet part of the three assertions is "under human supervision".

You can certainly visit various zoos and purchase art by elephants and watch them paint with brushes on large canvases.

Typically less dense than a Jackson Pollack and less use of spaghetti than a Pro Hart* carpet.

( * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qb4n8yc2so )

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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by ab5tract on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @04:27AM (#40643875)
Fun fact: Bison created deep, wide grooves in the plains and prairies that were subsequently used by the settlers moving west in their wagons.
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by pvaldes on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @01:40PM (#40660813)
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).

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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by Log_out_ on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @01:46AM (#40642847)
How do they react to complex reveals? Google earth + ZOOM on a tablet? A video of evolutionary development and history?
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by Log_out_ on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @12:35PM (#40660043)
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..
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by g15jv2dp on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @01:50PM (#40660916)
Show a human from 300 AD a tablet with google earth and zoom, and they'd have no idea wtf is going on. It's not about intelligence.
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by Log_out_ on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @03:57PM (#40662353)
They can recognize the surroundings, move to places they visited on the "magic" map and display curiosity towards the wider world and its shape.
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by tzarko on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:05PM (#40672075)
Using google earth on a tablet along with a zoom slider as a way of measuring cognition is the most HN take I’ve seen in a while.
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Re:Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to... by waste_monk on Thursday June 13, 2024 @03:47AM (#40667047)
It's said that they never forget, and they never forgive.
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