elephant paints an elephant

[mjrpes]

holy shit

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/29/el ... -an-e.html

[saturn]

saw that earlier.....it's awesome. It can paint better than Gramps!

[Grandpa Stu]

that's insane in a crazy cool way.

i'd like more backstory on it though; did it just decide to paint a self portrait one day or was it trained?
i'm gonna go with trained.

[shadd_]

cool

[R00k]

Wow, that's amazing - even if it is trained.

[Transient]

I could do better.

[Tsakali_]

you can clearly see the concentration it took the elephant to do that...pretty cool

[zeeko]

Wow, that's amazing - even if it is trained.

it's funny you say "even if it is trained" because 99.9% of artists are trained in similar punishment/reward systems as the elephant.

[Scourge]

Wow, that's amazing - even if it is trained.

it's funny you say "even if it is trained" because 99.9% of artists are trained in similar punishment/reward systems as the elephant.

Yeah, because it's the same thing.

[Grandpa Stu]

the difference here is that "trained" humans usually aspire to train themselves.

the question is whether or not the elephant as able to act on it's own free will to create the image or if it was encouraged through a result and reward type training program to recreate a specific image.

[Transient]

Plus, I doubt the elephant recognizes the image as that of a fellow elephant. They're likely just lines to it that are drawn in a specific order. That's what it looks like judging by the way he traces over areas and starts new lines from the same spot. The drawing has no meaning to him other than food.

[Ryoki]

Maybe so, but i'm still impressed

[YourGrandpa]

Makes you wonder who really did all of those cave drawings.



Pretty cool.

[saibot]

Plus, I doubt the elephant recognizes the image as that of a fellow elephant. They're likely just lines to it that are drawn in a specific order. That's what it looks like judging by the way he traces over areas and starts new lines from the same spot. The drawing has no meaning to him other than food.

I have heard that elephants are one of the few animals with self-awareness to the point of being able to know who they are when looking in a mirror. I am not saying that this means for sure that this elephant understands the fact that it is drawing a picture of a member of its species, but I think its very possible.

I have always wondered to what extent animals such as primates and elephants etc. understand the world around them, as they are very much like us as they are born with a fraction of the instincts to survive, it must be learned. They are even compassionate towards more than just elephants going largely out of their way to avoid hurting other animals and even go as far as burying their dead, mourning, and returning to the grave. I know this is a bit off the subject but it is incredible what behaviors these animals exhibit, making me wonder to what extent they understand life and even death.

[Peenyuh]

I think that was very much ON subject. Elephants are quite intelligent (spell?) and I believe they are closer to man in seeing and understanding the world around them than most other creatures. P{eople say dolphins are intelligent like humans. I can agree on that, but I think the way they understand the world is incomprehensible to us. At least elephants and humans can laugh at the same jokes and understand the same emotions.

If that elephant has learned to use that amount of dexterity, I have no doubts that it fully understands the subject of it's art. It may even be a specific individual in that elephants life.

[andyman]

Plus, I doubt the elephant recognizes the image as that of a fellow elephant. They're likely just lines to it that are drawn in a specific order. That's what it looks like judging by the way he traces over areas and starts new lines from the same spot. The drawing has no meaning to him other than food.

yeah it's just a big dumb animal right?

[Tsakali_]

teaching a monkey to type in a password, doesn't mean it has the skillz to hax0r.

[andyman]

he still has typing skills...

[Tsakali_]

not really, all he knows is that he needs to push these 6 specific buttons in the right order...once you switch out the keyboard with another layout he would either not recognize the positions of thiese buttons he had to push, or if the keyboard layout looked similar he would go through his process and most likely fail to type in the right password.

[Tsakali_]

depends on how you taught the monkey to remember the 'password' you might teach him locations of buttons , or maybe a smarter way to make the monkey seem more intelligent is to teach him the shape of the letter keys he needs to push, but when it comes down to it a monkey is nothing more than a specificaly instructed program like in a computer...sure you can teach him enough instructions to make him seem intelligent but at the end of the day it's nothing more than a program, in which the more 'if- then's ' you include the bigger the illusion of intelligence is.

[Peenyuh]

Anyone have a lab, a monkey, and a keyboard?

um... or it didn't happen.

[Tsakali_]

now you might want to consider the monkeys ability to retain given instructions as a sign of intelligence but that's subjective at this point.

[Peenyuh]

Also, using monkeys doesn't seem to be fair to the elephant. Maybe if the elephant had an oposible thumb and the agility of the monkey, he might do more than the monkey. Might build a civilization.

[andyman]

I'll know I'm right when you homos start saying 'ohh but it's wiki durrrrrr'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence

[Tsakali_]

k when you point out an object and tell the elephant to draw it...even if he draws a stick figure resembling the actual object then I'll be impressed.