New research suggests elephants can understand human pointing

Researchers from the University of St Andrews have found that elephants are able to understand human pointing without any training.

It is believed elephants are the only wild animals to understand humans in this way, having never been bred or domesticated for human interaction.

The researchers, Anna Smet and Professor Richard Byrne, had set out to test whether African elephants could learn to follow pointing.

They said: “In our study we found that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so. This has shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates.”

Professor Byrne explained: “When people want to direct the attention of others, they will naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Pointing is the most immediate and direct way that humans have for controlling others’ attention.”

The research team worked with a group of elephants who give rides to tourists in Zimbabwe. The animals were trained to follow voice commands but were not accustomed to pointing.

Anna Smet explained: “We always hoped that our elephant subjects – whose ‘day job’ is taking tourists for elephant-back rides near Victoria Falls – would be able to learn to follow human pointing.”

“But what really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything. Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment.”

The researchers say that it is possible that elephants may do something akin to pointing as a means of communicating with each other, using their trunk.

The findings may help explain how humans have been able to rely on wild elephants as work animals as it seems they understand humans in a way most animals don’t.

Image courtesy of the University of St Andrews