Rhonda Johansson – “Dumbo” may be a misnomer. Elephants may be more intelligent than we thought — and trust us,  we already thought very highly of these gentle giants. A team from Cambridge University said in a new study that elephants have high levels of self-awareness; an ability that doesn’t develop in human children until at least the age of two. The research showed that elephants recognize their own bodies as obstacles to problem solving, showing amazing capacity to view themselves as separate from the environment.

Who is this cute creature I see? Oh, it’s me!

The standard test for self-awareness for both animals and young children is the mirror self-recognition test; that is, understanding that the reflection is their own. Only four animal species have shown skill in this: great apes, dolphins, magpies, and yes, elephants. Elephants were first tested for this ability more than a decade ago.

A 2006 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that elephants were able to recognize themselves in the mirror. One specific elephant, which researchers named “Happy,” repeatedly touched her trunk to the white X painted on her forehead that was only visible in the mirror. Researchers of this study concluded that self-awareness is correlated with other higher-levels of thinking. “There seems to be some correlation between an ability to recognize oneself in a mirror and higher forms of social complexity,” said one of the authors of the 2006 study, Joshua Plotnik. Continue reading →