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Reposted from New Scientist Online

Elephants can work cooperatively if that is the only way to reach food. This kind of coordinated behaviour was once thought to be unique to our nearest primate relatives.

Joshua Plotnik of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and his colleagues have previously shown that elephants seem to recognise themselves in a mirror. To test the animals’ understanding of cooperation, Plotnik and his colleagues have developed an elephant version of an experiment originally run with chimps.

In this experiment, a pair of animals can bring a platform bearing food within their grasp if both simultaneously pull on the ends of a rope threaded through it. If only one pulls the rope, it unthreads from the platform, leaving the food out of reach.

The Thai elephants the researchers studied learned to tug in unison with their trunks. In experiments in which one animal was held back by up to 45 seconds, its partner would wait for it to turn up before starting to pull. Most strikingly, in trials in which one end of the rope was curled up and out of reach, both animals backed away from the apparatus, making no attempt to pull on the rope.

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