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Bengaluru:
An itch is a pesky downside. While people and primates use their fingers, canines and cats use limbs, and rhinos and buffaloes have their symbiotic “tick birds”, what do elephants have? Turns out, it is their mind.
Researchers on the Bengaluru Bannerghatta Biological Park just lately noticed novel use of instruments amongst a few of its 23 resident Asian Elephants (Elephas Maximus) for hitherto unseen “problem solving”.
The elephants, all of whom have been both born in captivity or rescued from temples, have been seen wrapping a stick of their trunk and utilizing it to scratch troublesome to achieve elements of the ear, mouth and stomach. These areas couldn’t have been accessed with their trunks alone or by rubbing their our bodies in opposition to timber, park officers mentioned.
Officials mentioned this exhibits elephants have extremely developed problem-solving skills, moreover nice cognition, reminiscence and sophisticated social behaviours.
Recently, Sundar, a 20-year-old elephant who was rescued from a temple in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur, was seen utilizing a chunk of lengthy keep on with scratch particular areas in his ear and the mouth. The park officers additionally reported that his fellow elephant, Menaka, was additionally seen exhibiting new talent with instruments. She has been noticed reaching difficult areas underneath her neck and stomach space with a twig.
“Tool use in elephants is not unique, but the level of complexity varies with each elephant. A study by Hart, et al. in 2001 shows how elephants use and modify branches to repel flies in Nagarhole National Park indicating that the cerebral cortex in the brain and body ratio is greater than that of any primate species,” park’s Executive Director Vanashree Vipin Singh mentioned.
Stating that elephants have been as clever as the nice apes, such because the chimpanzees and orangutans, park officers mentioned the just lately noticed use of twigs was completely different.
According to the journal, Scientific American, elephants do not use their trunks to make use of instruments fairly often as a result of it impacts their sense of scent, which is stronger than their eyesight.
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