This will amaze you

This just shows me again in what a wonderful world we live in!

I love this planet and I love the life I have! I'm grateful every day that I have the chance to take a part in this wonderful universe and leave some traces that hopefully will be good for everyone!

That's also why I try to be very selective on the different kinds of meat that I eat. I'm working hard so that I can afford to eat only organic meat, but it's not easy, I can tell you!

Actually, I'm not THAT surprised. As for it being faked, I assume the elephant did it. If the elephant merely did it by HABIT, it is VERY complex! Imagine trying to get a poor artist human to do that! 8-)

Heck, there are a LOT of FAMOUS painters that couldn't hold a candle to it. Look at pablo picasso!

Steve

Leonardo Da Vinci had it right; the best source of inspiration is nature. Just model whatever you're doing after nature, study nature, and you'll have enough ideas to last you for several lifetimes.

Fascinating! Yes, of course animals can do more than we would ever suspect, and I believe they have more knowledge than most people realize.

However, as I watch the elephant draw/paint I find myself wondering whether the elephant is drawing what it sees, or drawing what it has been trained to draw.

At exactly 7:23 in the video there is a fellow starting to carry away an easel with multiple drawings of the same flower the elephant drew.

So, perhaps a trainer taught the elephant to draw two items, the flower, and the elephant. Then the trainer gives the elephant a command to draw either or both.

Does my Great Pynenees really understan the word "sit" in the same way humans do? Does she really understand the concept of automobile when she hears the command, "car" when we are going to drive somewhere?

"Outside" means out the front door. "Porch" means the deck on the back of the house eventhough it is outside.

When I drive to my office, and let her out the side door of the car and say, "outside," she goes over to an area where I can tie her with a 20ft dog tie. If, when letting her out of the car I say, "studio," she goes to the back door of the office. I call it studio because it used to be a photography studio. In each case it is a command that tells her to "go" to a certain place.

I suspect the elephant draws a flower when given the comman that represents flower to the elephant.

The question is whether or not the elephant knows it is a representation of the flower instead of being a particular action to take upon hearing whatever is the command to draw a flower.

:-Don

Yeah, I saw the multiple drawings of the flower. But the elephant PICKED ONE and drew IT! Even if they were ALL the same, that shows intelligence. MAYBE the elephant was copied from another picture. HECK, maybe it was paiting a TRACING! That STILL shows ability. HECK, I still remember this cartoon show hosted by tom hatten(?) He was merely finishing SKETCHES, and HE was HUMAN!

The fact is that the elephant has no reason to draw unless given some sort of great treat or it likes it. Still, if given a treat, WOW. The more involved the task, the more the elephant may expect.

Somehow, even if it were a trick, I think it is cute. an elephant painting a kind of self portrait.

Steve

lol i agree with this

Wow! Thank you for sharing this!

Wow that is simply rocking. Keep on posting stuff like that. That is amazing Thanks a lot Sal.

At about 7:20 in the camera zooms out and you can see another easel set up down the street with another elephant presumably painting.

A bohemian elephant colony. Who knew?


I don't know, Kay ... I know what a lot of my dog's noises and mannerisms mean, and I'm sure many pet owners could identify some of their own pet's "language" without trying too hard.

Bloody arty farty types.

Why don't they get real jobs?

Wow! That animal drew better than I would! Great video.

Do you think Elephants can write articles for us in the future also? lol

I don't get remember where I seen this before but all I want to say this is wonderful. I like it.

This is awesome. It is speechless. Thanks for sharing the video.

Good job I was sat down when I saw this or that elephant painting would have knocked me for 6. haha
Still, the elephant was trained so not as impressive as it could be, but then what do we expect. Maybe in years to come we will have natural born painters in the elephant kingdom that descended from this 1 elephant....maybe...

Hey tim, yeah I didn't give any thought to people that considered such paintings, as pablo picassos, to be better than say anything leonardo da vinci could ever do. Frankly, I never thought much about picasso. The best I saw from him I didn't care for and the worst was amazing in that it actually sold.

Steve

This is so amazing. My son flipped out (animal lover like me) and says all his FaceBook people love it.

Wouldn't you know a fricking Simp commented at YouTube 'but did the elephant know what he was drawing' - as if that makes it any less amazing if he didn't.

Some people just love their ugly negativity and I love to hate them.

The fact that it is not abstract like most animal drawings, but very exact is what blows my mind. (and yes he draws better than I can)...

Hey, thanks for sharing the vid.
We recently visited a zoo in Thailand where there were elephants painting similar to this.
They really seemed to know what they were doing.
The paintings were simple but truly amazing.

I've seen this before and it's amazing

It's so heartbreaking to know how we humans abuse / mistreat these marvelous beasts

Rev

I'm not impressed. If I had all those evolutionary advantages like a 35 pound brain and an opposable nose I might be able to draw that well too

That is an actual artist with observation skills and talent. It's always nice to see something like that.

Does the Human teach them or is the elephant talented by nature?

OMG the elephant is much better than me by far at drawing AWESOME !!!!

Yes, unlike we used to be taught - many animals use tools.

Did you hear someone here say that they were smarter than humans?
The point is that they have conceptual abilities and if treated like beings with conceptual abilities they can do things that people just don't give them credit for being able to do or even think about. That's science. Also - more of a person's actions come from the same sort of instinctual programing than humans want to admit. Intellectually we are smarter -- but look what we've done with it. I just hope we're smart enough to turn it around.

Exactly how much of what you know did you learn on your own without being taught? How much of what you've learned since did you learn because you were taught the skills to do it?

It was found that when Monkeys were taught to use language and keyboards that the parents would teach it to their young. It's always easier to teach a young animal to do things if an older animal who already knows is around, too. They watch and learn - that is a part of instinctual behavior that ALL life forms share - and yes, I mean humans, too. Our language systems are no less hardwired into our brains than animal's communications systems are. Our vocal chords allow for more extensive sound patterns. Animals use other signals besides vocal more often than humans.

Animals learn smell about the same way we learn our natural language. They learn their pack's vocal language, too - but it's awesome what they know by smelling something. It's the same type of thing as an Indian being able to tell how long ago someone passed by by looking at footprints. We don't have a sense of smell like that so can't relate to that part of their intellect - it's there, we just can't relate to it. Animals on the other hand are able to adapt to our communications because they use all the senses we use for communicating.

Now people will want to argue whether language in humans is instinctual. No matter what was pounded into you -- It IS an instinct.
There have been many cases (these are sick and sad cases, but they still demonstrate the fact) where kids have been isolated from any other human. Sometimes these were cases of abuse where kids were locked up on their own and never spoken to - food shoved at them and that was it. Then there were experiments - some of those nasty little experiments that scientists and governments conduct in secret and outrage people when they find out about them...........well those types of studies were conducted by isolating two or three kids together with no communication other than with each other. The result? The kids, in all cases, develop their own language. If it were not instinctively programmed in, that would NOT have happened or would have only have happened in a percent of cases. It happens in ALL cases.

Without the instinctual programing in our brain we'd never be able to develop more complex thought processes. So we can thank our hardwiring for our intellect -- and be aware that all other animal life has instinctual thought and thus the ability to develop higher thought processes. We may have had advantages that allowed us to excel, but we aren't the only thinking beings on this planet and anyone who refuses to admit that is speaking from egocentricity or religious ideology rather than from a scientific view of the world.