Why Do Elephants Have Higher Social Cognitions?

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Picture this. You're out in Thailand and see two elephants, you realize that one of the elephants has fallen over and is in trouble. When the first elephant falls, the second one instantly goes over and started trying to lift him with his tusks. Now. The question is, do elephants have higher social cognitions such as humans? Articles about the experiments like ‘Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk’ ‘Elephants Console Each Other’ and ‘Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task’ all go over this question. Their answer to the question is, yes, elephants have cognitive skills like humans do. In the article ‘Elephants can Lend a Helping Trunk’ they gather evidence from multiple scientific studies that seemed to show elephants had cognitive skills like humans. They also pointed out many times that the main point of the article was that elephants have high social cognition. In the article about the essay they state “Elephants have higher social cognition.” They also state that “Elephants understood that they needed one another's assistance.” The first quote pointed out the main idea that this article was trying to inform us on. With the second quote which came after they gave scientific information, they pointed out what the research said that added to the argument. …show more content…

In this article though they have separate pieces of evidence. The article by Virginia Morell, states “That shows the elephants understood why they needed a partner...” The article clearly states that the elephants thought about the experiment they were putting them through and realized it wasn't reasonable without a partner. It also states “By using voice commands...” this piece shows us that elephants can understand voice and learn how to hear it. These two pieces from the article show greatly that elephants have cognitive skills and can grow and learn off of

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