The funny thing is that the elephants probably wouldn't regard this as particularly intelligent behavior. Well, except to the extent that a stunt that gets you peanuts can't be all bad.
On the other hand, if some elephants managed to use operant conditioning (and a special prosthetic, like a big drum) to teach a human how to subsonically tell another elephant ten miles away that the herd is gathering near the water hole, that human would be the star of the elephant world. The elephants would gather round to marvel at the human's astonishing front feet -- they aren't really very strong, but they can pick things up with their toes, almost as if they were using a trunk!
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The funny thing is that the elephants probably wouldn't regard this as particularly intelligent behavior. Well, except to the extent that a stunt that gets you peanuts can't be all bad.
On the other hand, if some elephants managed to use operant conditioning (and a special prosthetic, like a big drum) to teach a human how to subsonically tell another elephant ten miles away that the herd is gathering near the water hole, that human would be the star of the elephant world. The elephants would gather round to marvel at the human's astonishing front feet -- they aren't really very strong, but they can pick things up with their toes, almost as if they were using a trunk!