Elephants are self-aware!
Ap, Washington
If you're Happy and you know it, pat your head. That, in a peanut shell, is how a 34-year-old female Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo showed researchers that pachyderms can recognise themselves in a mirror complex behaviour observed in only a few other species. The test results suggest elephants or at least Happy are self-aware. The ability to distinguish oneself from others had been shown only in humans, chimpanzees and, to a limited extent, dolphins. That self-recognition may underlie the social complexity seen in elephants, and could be linked to the empathy and altruism that the big-brained animals have been known to display, said researcher Diana Reiss, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the Bronx Zoo.
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Image provided by National Academy of Sciences of 34-year-old female Asian elephant Happy at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Happy showed researchers that pachyderms can recognise themselves in a mirror--a highly complex behaviour previously known only in a few other species. PHOTO: AFP |
