Dog owners know - perhaps frustratingly so - their pets "get" the pointing gesture. It may take a few moments, but understanding eventually sets in. Most wild animals such as wolves and chimpanzees, however, cannot comprehend this simple hand symbol.
Falling somewhere between wild and domesticated, the elephant can, according to a study by University of St. Andrews researchers Anna Smet and Richard Byrne.
The elephants used in the study were in some ways domesticated. They're owned by a safari company for the purpose of giving rides to tourists in South Africa; however, they had no previous experience with pointing and kept a more natural lifestyle when not transporting humans, International Business Times reported.
Turned out the elephants didn't need any experience. When researchers placed two buckets in their field of vision - one containing food - and pointed, the elephants tended to follow the instruction. No significant differences were found from the first to the last trial. Innately, the elephants understood the point.
"What really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything," Smet said. "Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment."
In the second scenario, researchers placed the buckets behind the elephants. Still, the mammals correctly interpreted the point.
"The most plausible account of our elephant's ability to interpret even subtle human pointing gestures as communicative is that human pointing, as we presented it, taps into elephants' natural communication system," the authors wrote. "We suggest that the functional equivalent of pointing might take the form of referential indication with the trunk."
"What elephants share with humans is that they live in an elaborate and complex network in which support, empathy and help for others are critical for survival," Byrne said. "It may be only in such a society that the ability to follow pointing has adaptive value, or, more generally, elephant society may have selected for an ability to understand when others are trying to communicate with them, and they are thus able to work out what pointing is about when they see it."
