Elephant painting. :o

[[Matt]]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE

 

[Raziaar]

Elephants are actually my favorite animal as I've said in the past. They are more beloved to me than Cows.

That is amazing.

And honestly, I believe this elephant wasn't taught to do what it just did. I believe it learned, but then it created something on its own.

Elephants are extremely intelligent and self aware.

 

[JFry]

that's impressive! Pretty clean lines considering he painted it with a trunk. It even has depth, which I didn't expect. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this elephant is more talented than your 5 year old daughter.

 

[delusional]

ő

elepchar

 

[MJ12]

Cute and amazing

I love ele-phants.

Wonder how much they made him practice that rick though

 

[Ren.182]

That's amazing! Some pretty good lines drawn there. Cute

 

[French Ninja]

Fascinating.
ಠ_ಠ

Edit: Goddamn it. I'm making an elephant only army in Rome: TW now. It would cost a shitload but I don't care...

 

[Que-Ever]

I liked the flower.

 

[Pinkle]

CUTE!! I love it! ^_^

 

[Teta_Bonita]

It must have taken them awhile to train it to do that.

 

[theotherguy]

It must have taken them awhile to train it to do that.

Exactly. They probably used skinner-esque conditioning, teaching it one stroke at a time, giving it a positive food reward after each correct stroke. I do not believe the elephant could have done this all on its own out of a creative spurt.

Even so, its still amazing.

 

[MJ12]

I dunno, this makes me kinda sad. Imagine being pestered to paint that same damn thing over and over again for something that is about an 8th of your size's entertainment.

 

[Krynn72]

Fake. You can clearly see a person on the side moving it's trunk.

 

[Raziaar]

Fake. You can clearly see a person on the side moving it's trunk.

The invisible man!

 

[bbson john]

I dunno, this makes me kinda sad. Imagine being pestered to paint that same damn thing over and over again for something that is about an 8th of your size's entertainment.

Ya, still they are cleve. At least the elephant knew what he was doing, since he re-outlined the parts where the colour was too faint.

 

[dfc05]

I liked the flower.

Me too. The rest of the drawing was cute too.

 

[Que-Ever]

Me too. The rest of the drawing was cute too.

oh yeah, the whole thing was very cute, but then it got to the flower and it was all over.

 

[dfc05]

oh yeah, the whole thing was very cute, but then it got to the flower and it was all over.

ah true. those were some very nice looking leaves on that flower...

 

[delusional]

If there was someone there... why would the crowd get so excited? </3

Elephants are so lovely. I once read that they're the only animal other than humans that can recognize their own reflection. :>!

monkeys and dolphins as well

 

[MJ12]

They also visit the burial areas of dead loved ones. Actually take their trunks and move it through the sand, feeling along the bones. so sad, so cute.

 

[Raziaar]

My god... I went to the zoo here once... and I saw an elephant doing this sort of thing, and he was dancing from one foot to the other. People thought it was so cute.

I knew he was under lots of stress and suffering from mental instability.

I also stood and watched an indian rhino for 30 minutes at the zoo, in the back area of his enclosure near a gate where keepers come in to do stuff. He was standing there swaying back and forth, pressing his face up against the chain link/board fence, consistently and for that entire duration. He continued at it even after I left, but I knew I had to move on. It was so sad watching him futilely pushing on that fence as if his gentle muzzling of it would allow him to escape and be free.

The other intelligent animals like the monkeys and orangutans and gorillas were all so very depressed looking. They sat still in their little enclosures with such watery, depressive eyes. They didn't look like they wanted to play. They just sat and stared mournfully at the visitors of the zoo who were all taking pictures and pointing at them, watching with such keen interest.

There was nothing interesting about watching them being sad and depressed.

On March 18, 2004 a gorilla named Jabari scaled a retaining wall and injured four visitors. He was fatally shot by a police SWAT team after being pursued by zoo employees through the Wilds of Africa exhibit.[2] This incident prompted several zoos to create or enhance Emergency Response Teams to deal with escaped animals.

EDIT: Though on second thought it might have been the Fort Worth Zoo I had been to, and not the Dallas zoo.

 

[[Matt]]

Exactly. They probably used skinner-esque conditioning, teaching it one stroke at a time, giving it a positive food reward after each correct stroke. I do not believe the elephant could have done this all on its own out of a creative spurt.

Even so, its still amazing.

I would imagine you are correct in your assumption about the elephant bieng conditionally trained to paint but its still incredibly impressive from the point of view that the elephant knew without prompting to go over the outlines that were not quite as thick or defined aswell as showing how incredibly dexterous their trunks can be.

Also im quite disgusted by the conditions the animals were kept in that raziaar mentioned in his post. Keeping animals in those sort of conditions simply isn't allowed here in the UK. Elephants are incredibly intelligent animals so I would personally lock up their owners/zoo keepers in the same conditions for a few months to see how they like it.

Wiki quote.

With a mass just over 5 kg (11 lb), elephant brains are larger than those of any land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twentyfold those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's. A wide variety of behaviour, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, allomothering (non maternal infant care), play, use of tools,[33] compassion and self-awareness evidence a highly intelligent species on par with cetaceans and primates.