"Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk" Article Analysis Essay

The author, Virginia Morelle gives many perspectives on elephant behavior and how scientists and researchers have learned about how elephants interact with each other in the articles that we have read. Each paragraph has a specific purpose in detailing elephants' social and emotional intelligence.

In "Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk" the author's goal in the article is to show the readers that elephants are extremely smart with social interaction with others. The purpose of this experiment was to explain that elephants know when to use teamwork to accomplish a task article tells about the. Asian elephants' ability to recognize their need for assistance/help with themselves and also others around them. Another animal that is similar to Asian Elephant's empathy is the African Elephants. They are just as caring and compassionate of others around them. The article tells about how scientists have modified a famous chimpanzee experiment that was invented in the 1930s to test Chimpanzee's cooperation with other Chimpanzees. The Experiment was modified to do the same thing, but with Elephants instead, used to again test cooperation between Elephants. The results of the experiment were 

In “Elephants can lend a helping trunk”, A team of scientists modified a famous experiment used on chimpanzees in the 1930s to test the elephants' collaboration skills with each other, which required two animals to work together. In this case, it would be the Asian Elephants. If they do they would get a reward, which would be a bowl of corn. If they don't work together, neither of them will receive the reward. They were forced to learn how to work together. The researchers used a sliding table with a rope tied around it for the elephants. Two bowls of corn were attached to the table, but the elephants could only get to them by pulling both ends of the rope at the same time. The rope would slide out if one elephant tugged the rope before the other, it would pull the rope loose and they wouldn't get their reward. "That trained them to work together," says Joshua Plotnik, a research scientist in experimental psychology at Cambridge University in the UK.

In "Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task, They show that elephants can learn to work with a partner in an experiment that requires two animals to pull two ends of the same rope at the same time to get a reward. The elephants not only had to act in sync, but they also restricted pulling for almost a minute if their partner's action was delayed. They also realized that pulling the rope was pointless if the partner didn't have access to the rope. Elephants have evolved to the same level of cooperation as chimpanzees in the original experiment used for the elephants. As a result, they finally figured out that they needed to work in sync to get their reward. 

In “Elephants console each other”, they performed another experiment about how compassionate and caring Asian Elephants are. Elephants are known to form close ties with their friends and family members. Asian elephants are very compassionate and caring animals, just like African Elephants. For 1 to 2 weeks every month for nearly a year, Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at Mahidol University, Kanchanaburi, in Thailand would observe the elephants for 30-180 minutes every day every month for nearly a year. He would record events that changed the elephant's behavior that particularly alarmed them. it could be as simple as a dog walking by, or a snake in the grass, and it would trigger the scared and worried feeling in one elephant and it would spread to every elephant in the premise. this effect is called the Domino effect. One thing would happen triggered by a certain event and would spread rapidly one by one. Just how like Dominos fall when aligned with each other. This effect would stay until the threat has passed. The experiment concluded that 84 cases triggered the elephants to be concerned within that period. As a result of the experiment, they concluded that after an event happens they can protect, comfort, and soothe each other. They all are compassionate and caring once it comes to the others around them. They use this power to protect and care for each other because they are family.