Talk:Elephant cognition

message: The text mentions elephants engaging in death 'rituals' (not sure if that's the proper term or if that's anthropomorphism, sorry on my part) and mourning of the dead, and then states that it's the only animal aside from humans and Neanderthal to engage in them, then somewhat awkwardly backpedals mid-sentence sort of like "Oh yeah, and also these other 20 examples and also this entire Family of living beings". I would change it, but I'm not sure what parts of it are even true enough to Wikipedia's standards to edit out as the sentence has a citation needed caption, and while I've heard of all of these things before in the past, I have to admit that the plural of anecdote isn't data or evidence, and I don't want to add more hearsay to the article. Hopefully somebody with more understanding of this phenomena can clarify on this, as it is, in my opinion very interesting and worth recording if we can get it brought up to proper citation standards. DamienGranz (talk) 03:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It is indeed very oddly phrased for Wikipedia, I wonder if it's directly copied from the referenced source (which of course is a book, meaning no instant access to check it)... In any case it should definitely be written in more formal and accurate way. 2A02:8109:8080:2C4:6844:C8E5:394:511F (talk) 20:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Elephant Death Rituals

message: How many nuerons does an elephant's brain contain? --Michael C. Price talk 13:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Please use the hyperlinked inline citations described in Wikipedia:Footnotes#How_to_use, rather than creating superscript numbers with html coding. The ref coding allows for dynamic lists, which will renumber themselves upon the addition or removal of a reference, and also allow for hyperlinks from number to actual note. Illustrating the first point, several of the superscripted numbers had no corresponding footnote, and the number was absolutely wacky. Natalie 01:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: "The Asian elephants in the study also displayed this type of behavior when standing in front of a 2.5 m-by-2.5 m mirror - they inspected the rear and brought food close to the mirror for consumption." --> This means the animal in question is NOT self aware, as they seek another animal from behind the mirror or try to feed it.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.223.214.179 (talk) 02:30, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self awareness 

message: Just a link drop, for future reference and possible inclusion. (I have too many tabs open...) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Painting 

message: Does anyone have any links or references to 
any studies or attempts to try to teach 
elephants to write symbols in either an 
alphabetic or a logographic script?  
4.242.174.54 (talk) 20:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elephant Writing 

message: An African elephant freed a rhino calf that was stuck in the mud -- something the calf's mother was apparently unaware of. Not certain where I encountered this anecdote, don't think the event was filmed.--Jrm2007 (talk) 10:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Altruism Example 

message: A video exists of a baby elephant that had been brought to a schoolyard observing kids using a swing. The elephant chased the kids away with its trunk and attempted to use the swing as it had seen the kids doing.--Jrm2007 (talk) 10:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Play Example 

message: I believe that some apes can be shown a model of a room in which something representing a treat has been placed in a hidden location and use this information to then find the treat in the actual room. Not all individuals of the same species can do this.
I wonder if this has been tried with elephants.--Jrm2007 (talk) 08:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: this should not be a matter of "room" size. instead of a room one could use a yard. the only thing that matters is the use of a makett, or map-like depiction of the location. I dont know of such an experiment.176.63.176.112 (talk) 21:19, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  An Experiment -- has it been done? 

message: In this section it says Cynthia Moss, the author of Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family recalls the event it then describes, however on page 16-17 of that book the author says that she did not actually see the event, but it is made up of past observations, circumstantial evidence and made-up material based on her knowledge of elephants.
This is my first time posting on a Talk page, and finding a 'mistake' so I hope I've followed the correct procedure.
85.211.70.221 (talk) 22:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elephant society 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Elephant cognition. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://tursiops.org/dolfin/guide/smart.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080312072357/http://express.lineone.net:80/posts/view/22474/Elephants-really-don-t-forget to http://express.lineone.net/posts/view/22474/Elephants-really-don-t-forget
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080509142153/http://www.elephantvoices.org/tools/documents/ElephantBrain_shoshani.pdf to http://www.elephantvoices.org/tools/documents/ElephantBrain_shoshani.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080509142153/http://www.elephantvoices.org/tools/documents/ElephantBrain_shoshani.pdf to http://www.elephantvoices.org/tools/documents/ElephantBrain_shoshani.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: i wonder if the experiments could be repeated with unschooled, untrained humans for a comparison. most exemplars of the human species are educated and trained fro a lot of tasks in school, like the use of procedures for for problem solving accumulated through human culture/civilization. the use of theese mental tools seems "natural" because all people are trained to operate in a more or less uniform technical civilization. elephants are obviously lacking this kind of civilizational framework as well as a specialized education for logical problem solving. so a comparison of the test results would be more relevant if the elephants' scores were compared to untrained, uneducated humans" results. perhaps a comparison of preschool age humans with their relative age-counterparts in elephants would be feasible. 176.63.176.112 (talk) 21:31, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  possible absencet of causal reasoning 

message: See this write-up for an overview of some of the details.
This Wiki page does essentially two things. It describes elephant intelligence and mental and emotional abilities in relative and qualitative terms and in doing so also goes into some detail about the elephant brain's physiological structures. I'm making this note because the level of detail is inconsistent. I have two thoughts. The first is that should as much detail as possible be desired for this page, information like the above is certainly relevant as is other missing information. Second, perhaps it would be better to have two pages if we devote a great deal of space, as the page has to some extent, on the elephant brain.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephmey (talk • contribs) 22:23, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes on Unique Cortical Structures and Other Structural Differences and Appropriate Level of Detail for This Page 

message: Many statements on this page are misleading. For example, the statement "Asian elephants have the greatest volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing of all existing land animals" is misleading as the neuron count is much more important than the amount of space those neurons occupy. The statement, however, seems to imply that either Asian elephants have the most cortical neurons (they don't), or that they're capable of using the empty spaces between neurons to process info.
Many statements also lack a credible source, such as the previous example about cortical volume. While the statement itself is definitely plausible, it is made in just two papers (one and two), which were both made by the brother and sister team Benjamin and Lynette Hart. I could find no other sources for the statement.
Other statements use unreliable sources, such as "a 2011 article published by ABC Science states that, 'elephants [are as] smart as chimps, [and] dolphins'". Not only does the statement quote the title of the article (and not its contents), but the article itself makes many claims not found in what it links as its source, such as relating anything to dolphins.
Still other statements simply misquote their source, such as stating "In addition, elephants have a total of 300 billion neurons" when the source clearly states 257 billion neurons. 
Then there are the sources which conflict with one another. An example can be seen in the opening paragraph, where the source of the (erroneously quoted) 300 billion neuron statement also states that elephants have about one-third the cortical neurons as humans. However, immediately after the 300 billion neuron statement, it goes on to say that elephants have the same number of cortical neurons as humans. The latter claim was a rough estimation made in 2000 with no scientific justification, used to pose a philosophical question.
Other statements toe the line between misleading and lie, such as "The elephant cortex has as many neurons as a human brain, suggesting convergent evolution". The first half is already erroneous (as previously mentioned), while the source cited for the second half describes a possible link between "adaptively evolved aerobic energy metabolism genes" and brain mass. Despite the statement seemingly claiming "number of neurons -> evolved to be smart like us", the source does not mention number of neurons, nor does it use neurons as the indicator for the pattern-based convergence.
This page desperately needs improvement.
Wiki contributor 67432 (talk) 18:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality of Statements and Sources, Conflicting Sources, and Statements Conflicting with Sources 

message: Hi, I added an archive link for one of the Viegas sources; the same article seems to be currently available here(an archive link should be more stable anyway). The other one seems to be quite similar, with the benefit of linking to the paper about the test, which is already used as a source in this article. I was thinking this could be simplified, but I'm too lazy to check if some information would be missing by doing so. Have a nice day 176.247.138.114 (talk) 13:44, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible source doubles