Joshua Plotnik is a psychologist at Hunter College in New York who has been studying the intelligence of elephants, in particular the Asian ones living in Thailand, for twenty years. Over the years, his team has demonstrated that pachyderms recognize themselves in the mirror, console their companions when they are sad and know how to solve all kinds of problems.
Now, in a study published on PLOS OnePlotnik and colleagues reveal another incredible cognitive ability of Asian elephants: they know how to restrain their impulses and act rationally.
Tasty puzzle
The impulse control experiment involved 16 Asian elephants living in the National Elephant Institute, a public institution in Thailand dedicated to pachyderm conservation. The animals were faced with a small puzzle: a transparent box full of fruit, with the face facing the elephants full of small holes from which the smell of the food came out. However, the only way to access the loot was through a hole on the opposite side of the box.
The elephants resisted the temptation to extend their trunks directly towards the unattainable food, and instead took their time to find the right opening. When the researchers then rotated the box, the elephants made a movement towards the previous location of the hole, but immediately held back and searched for the new opening.
Elephants don’t act on impulse
It may seem like a very simple behavior, but it is actually a reflection of complex cognitive abilities: instead of acting instinctively by trying to grab the fruit even though it was out of reach, they took their time to find the right solution on the first try. Not everyone “performed” at the same level: older specimens proved to be less flexible, which could indicate that there is a link between age and mental agility.
Inhibitory control, that is, the ability to block automatic behavior and replace it with a more appropriate one, is a complex cognitive ability, and is also very important for survival: elephants who know how to control their impulses are more successful in an environment like theirs, which is unpredictable and always changing.
According to Plotnik, understanding how elephants make decisions and control their behavior is not just a curiosity, but could be essential knowledge for their conservation.
