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Well that's a bummer. On a lighter elephants note, they're incredibly capable at painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxO7MPUKH8 https://www.youtube.com
by pengaru 6y ago
Well that's a bummer.
On a lighter elephants note, they're incredibly capable at painting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxO7MPUKH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxO7MPUKH8
- scarlac 6y agoAll the videos of painting elephants I've seen include a handler that very clearly is holding their tusk or ear. I'd absolutely love this to be true but it quite honestly seems like puppeteering?
- pengaru 6y agoThe handler is obviously present to manage the brushes, I presume the physical contact is more to do with signaling when to break for reloading/switching brushes. Do you really think the linked BBC clip would have been made if it were "puppeteering"? The whole premise was working with the elephant to explore its creative side.
- wyattpeak 6y agoThere are possibilities beyond intentionally controlling the elephant. There is for example the case of Clever Hans[1], a horse who was supposedly able to perform arithmetic: it was eventually concluded most likely that Hans was reacting to his trainer's unconscious cues. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
- abraae 6y agoGood on you perhaps for injecting a lighter note, but I'd personally rather that these very upsetting events retain their gravity and perhaps shock us into action. Case in point the Australian bush fires earlier this year. Half a billion or so dead animals and millions of hectares of habitat burned to a crisp. But cue happy news stories about someone rescuing a koala and feeding it milk from a baby bottle - something that makes absolutely not one jot of difference to the massive death and devastation contributed to by our (humans) shitty environmental stewarding.
- pengaru 6y agoDid we read the same article? The cause isn't known yet. I'm not in favor of "shocking us into action" when we're not even informed of what it is we're acting on. Quick, act! Sign this petition banning dihydrogen monoxide!
- throwaway384629 6y agoAny action is better than diluting the discussion with irrelevant information
- pengaru 6y ago> Any action is better than diluting the discussion with irrelevant information At least you're aware enough of how embarrassingly dumb your comments are to use a throwaway account.
- throwaway384629 6y agoIts even more dumb of you to think that i created a throwaway account just to reply to you!
- dorkwood 6y agoWhat if the action causes harm?
- rkhassen9 6y agoWhat about action to figure out what happened?
- 3gg 6y agoInteresting. Since this is from BBC Earth I guess it's legit, but from my earlier understanding, painter elephants typically go through long processes of torture to "learn" how to paint things for tourists. I will skip linking to any references since we are on the topic of a mass elephant death, but you can easily find them on the Web. Or perhaps my understanding was incorrect all along?
- ars 6y agoI don't have specific information but elephants are very very very smart. And most smart animals very much enjoy being trained, they seem to enjoy the interaction and the challenge. For example wild dolphins will sometimes come to humans just in order to play with them or to interact.
- ornornor 6y agoI don’t know... if you haven’t already, look up how are elephants “trained” so that they can carry tourists on their backs... or beg in the streets... it’s not pretty and it is torture.