STUDYING THE MIND OF AN ELEPHANT
By Josh Plotnik
As soon as I wake up, I glance at my watch. It’s 6 a.m.
Outside, it sounds like the brass section of the Emory Symphony
Orchestra. I roll out of bed, and as I step towards the door,
one foot in front of the other, the first finds the floor, while
the second cleanly goes right through it. I smile. Bamboo floors
are, after all, made of bamboo. I open the door as I throw on
a sweatshirt. It feels like 60 degrees now but in three hours
it will be pushing 100. I stroll out to my balcony made of –
you guessed it, bamboo – and sit comfortably watching the
giant grey jumbos enjoying an early morning meal.
Four months ago, I packed up my Toco Hills apartment and moved
to Thailand. Four years ago, when I first came to Emory, there
was little chance I would have predicted that I would now be studying
elephants as a PhD dissertation project. I became interested in
animal behavior as an undergraduate, and came to Emory to work
with Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at the
Yerkes National Primate Research Center and C.H. Candler Professor
of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology, specifically
to study chimpanzee social behavior. When he presented me with
an opportunity to work with a larger, similarly intelligent (yet
remarkably understudied) mammal two years later, I jumped at the
chance. In 2006, he and I, along with Diana Reiss of CUNY Hunter
College, conducted the first successful test of mirror self-recognition
(MSR) in Asian elephants, at the Bronx Zoo in New York. By demonstrating
that elephants are capable of recognizing themselves in their
mirror images, we were able to add the elephant to an already
small group of intelligent animals: humans, the great apes (chimpanzees,
bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas) and dolphins. The question
of what the mirror test actually tells us about the animal mind
is hotly debated, but its indication of an animal’s self-awareness
may have links to other cognitively complex capacities, including
empathy. Such behavior is remarkably unique to the same small
group of MSR-capable animals: dolphins will help injured and tired
conspecifics to the water’s surface to breathe, chimpanzees
will help injured birds try to fly or reach for crying infants
in trees, and elephants will coordinate the lifting of a dying
conspecific, followed by the covering of its body if it passes.
The mirror study, although easy to understand and seemingly simple
to explain, raises a ton of new questions. Non-human primates
have been continuously studied for decades, with a wealth of literature
on both their cognition and behavior available with a few clicks
within the Emory on-line databases. But elephants have received
remarkably little attention in terms of the links between their
minds and their behavior. In only a few short months in Thailand,
I’ve seen some incredible social behavior, such as instant
reaction to an elephant infant’s distress calls, whether
they are serious or benign, the latter often a result of a fluttering
garbage bag or a barking dog; conflict between adult females over
a magnificently tall yet stubbornly old bull elephant; and female
pairs that bully other females, until their respective families
come to their rescue. Often, some of the most incredible interactions
center around the young 1- to 3-year-old elephant calves. A calf
may wander away from its family, and come across a snake or something
as small as a twig. He lets out a squeal, and immediately, his
mother and aunties, the latter not always individuals closely
related to him, perk up. Their ears come straight out –
indicating close listening, but also a sign of distress or alertness
– and they immediately make a bee-line for the baby (elephants
can move as fast as 15 mph, so it’s best to not be in their
way). With trumpets, deep rumbles that sound like an approaching
thunderstorm, and high-pitched chirps, repetitive sounds a bit
like bird song, the adults swarm around the infant, creating a
large, grey cocoon that is virtually impenetrable. With the baby
on the inside, the adults, constantly touching each other and
the calf, stay alert towards any possible threat on the outside.
With a few trunk smacks on the ground – a loud popping noise
the elephants make to keep others away, seemingly by blowing air
out of their trunks as they smack them on the ground – the
incredibly emotional interaction is over.
I split my time in Thailand between two research sites, one for
conducting behavioral observations (the Elephant Nature Park in
Chiang Mai) and the other for conducting cognition experiments
(the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang) similar in
style to our mirror study. In captivity, one mahout,
or elephant caretaker, is responsible for a single elephant’s
care. Because I spend each day working with the elephants and
their mahouts, I have had the opportunity to develop
strong bonds with both the animals and the men. I recently emailed
John Ford, senior vice president and dean of Campus Life, and
Tim Downes, director of Athletics and Recreation, for some help
in getting surplus Emory gear for the mahouts. Within
24 hours, they had already prepared a box of clothes. I haven’t
had a chance to distribute the Emory T-shirts yet, but I know
that a single T-shirt will likely double the wardrobe of most
of the mahouts. You can feel pretty guilty walking around
with expensive camera equipment that is equal to the 6-month-salary
of most of the people around you. Having the luxury of watching
elephants for a living suddenly doesn’t seem all that glamorous.
The sanity comes, however, from sitting in a field with a mahout
and his elephant. As the mahout carves a small wooden
elephant to sell to tourists, I speak softly into my voice recorder
as his elephant carefully touches the face of one of the young
calves. The mahout looks at me and smiles – the
only concrete form of communication when our languages are so
markedly different – and suddenly it’s about the elephant
and tranquility. And then, being a graduate student feels pretty
good.
Josh Plotnik is a PhD student in psychology from New York, NY. He
is currently studying in Thailand as a 2007-08 U.S. Dept. of Education
Fulbright-Hays Fellow.
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