painting elephants

PariahPoet · Post by **PariahPoet** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:14 pm

This is pretty amazing what this elephant can do. Not only does it prove that this elephant understands and is proficient in the use of tools, but more importantly, it shows that she can understand abstract concepts. She grasps that a two-dimensional image can represent an elephant.

it makes me wonder just how much more goes on in their minds than we give them credit for.
I would love to spend some time studying these painting elephants. It seems like they have the potential to use a written pictographical language.

http://www.noob.us/entertainment/an-ele ... elephants/

RedEye · Post by **RedEye** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:10 am

I gotta look at that a couple of more times, but I tend to agree.

Spiritbw · Post by **Spiritbw** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:27 am

Well, Elephants are pretty smart. They are one of the few animals(dolphins being the other that comes to mind) that when shown a mirror realize it's thier reflection and not another animal. If it can do a painting of another elephant, in effect trying to do on paper what it sees that's rather impressive. Usually you get bright splashes of colour and a mess.

Renorei · Post by **Renorei** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:22 pm

Are there any other elephants that are actually painting things, or are the rest of them just painting abstract shapes and lines? If this elephant is the only one that is representing 3d objects in 2d art...well, maybe she's just a genius elephant.

MoonKit · Post by **MoonKit** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:34 pm

Wow...thats quite incredible. Here I was thinking I was gonna click the link and have to try and find an elephant shape in an abstract mess. Boy was I blown away. Thats incredible! Better then some humans can do!

Anónimo Juan · Post by **Anónimo Juan** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:19 am

I don't know, sometimes in circus, they train elephants to do things they wouldn't do with hits and stuff, I hope this is not the case.

ravaged_warrior · Post by **ravaged_warrior** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:22 am

Now, see, when it's abstract, I don't trust it. There's no proof that they just aren't rubbing brushes on the canvas as a form of mimicry or because they like the colors. This example is obviously something intentional, so that's pretty cool.

RedEye · Post by **RedEye** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:49 pm

Not so abstract! The image shows at least one elephant actually drawing a recognizable picture...which is incredible.

There is only one flaw with Pariah's idea of an elephant picture language...since they never forget, why write it down? (joking)

I know: so dumb human mahouts can get them what they ordered.

MoonKit · Post by **MoonKit** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:48 pm