Elephants know what it means to point to something, no training required
Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 12:30
in Biology & Nature
When people want to direct the attention of others, they naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Now, researchers have shown that elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That's all the more impressive given that many great apes fail to understand pointing when it's done for them by human caretakers, the researchers say.