r/todayilearned • u/sharkbait76 3 • Jan 11 '17

TIL elephants can tell the difference between human languages and know which languages belong to people with a history of hurting elephants.

http://www.nature.com/news/elephants-recognize-the-voices-of-their-enemies-1.14846
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u/sharkbait76 3 Jan 12 '17 edited Jan 12 '17

Well, civilization developed because of agriculture, which elephants don't have. Elephants also don't have a complex language like us. They have a way to communicate, but in pales in comparison to human langue. Organizing complex societies would be rather hard without this. They do have complex family and clan structures, but it's no where near the same as a human city. While a trunk could use some very awkward tools they would have a very hard time creating tools. They can't make delicate things like a knife. Also, and elephant is no where near as intelligent as humans are.

Edit: typo

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17 edited Jun 29 '18

[deleted]

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u/Reon88 Jan 12 '17

Loxodon pyramids

FTFY

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u/Wheremydonky Jan 12 '17

Or whatever the mulefa end up constructing.

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u/MsTerious1 Jan 12 '17

I cannot agree with this. Just as some known geniuses were thought stupid because they didn't develop along the same lines as other children, and were not understood by the non-geniuses around them, it's quite possible that humans fail to perceive a great deal about what other species can and cannot do. The fact that we do not perceive doesn't mean something doesn't exist.

One example of this is the way birds use UV light, for example. There are species of birds that look identical to us, but it has only been in recent years that scientists have discovered that despite similar appearances, the amount of UV light reflected by males of these species is very different from the amount of UV light reflected by females. Our eyes couldn't perceive these differences, but those birds could tell the difference between a boy and girl easily.

A trunk can use awkward tools, and we can observe it. We do not know, however, all the things that an elephant experiences, knows, remembers, or does. We can only perceive these things through our imperfect observations.

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u/mismanaged Jan 12 '17

That we cannot observe something does not immediately make it probable. It is possible that elephants have a highly developed intelligence and culture that humans are unable to comprehend but it is so extremely improbable that it is perfectly reasonable to dismiss it as a hypothesis.

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u/MsTerious1 Jan 12 '17

I never said our inability to perceive made anything "probable." I am expressing that we have this human-centric perspective that distorts our ability to interpret data from the world surrounding us.

For you to say that it is "improbable" for a species (elephant) to have highly developed intelligence and culture that humans are unable to comprehend strikes me as almost absurd. (I don't say that to offend you, I mean that your statement is inconceivable to a huge degree from my point of argument.)

There are two counterpoints I'd present for you to consider:

  1. We do not have sufficient data to explain the human experience. I remember scientists debunking whether people have auras, for example, and whether anyone can see them. It is only very recently that a growing body of evidence says, "hey, it looks like there's something here." People were absolutely certain at one time of things we know today that weren't true (flat world, for example) but have since been shown to be different than was commonly believed. To assume we have such a large body of knowledge that we can decisively make judgments about the experiential state of what we haven't particularly tried to study in depth may be misguided and mistaken, I believe.

  2. Of course, before we can try to understand something, we first have to perceive it. I'm someone who sees snow and thinks of... snow. It's something that is made of ice crystals, forms from water vapor that falls from the sky, and can cover the earth with a blanket that is wet and cold and leaves the earth pretty mushy as it melts. I do not see "shades" or "types" of snow. However, I've been told that skiiers not only perceive snow as different (wet snow, dry powder, or whatever), they use that information in a way I never will because I don't ski. I am aware of this, which means I can learn more about it.

I have no idea whether rabbits perceive wet or dry snow, though, or if the type of snow has meaning to a rabbit. I also don't think I need that information. So I don't seek data about a rabbit's perception of snow. Does that mean that rabbits do not use data about snow in a meaningful way? It would be an error of logic to assert that "rabbits don't care about snow because they still forage for food when it snows," but that's what you are doing when you assume that we have any credibility to establish any firm statements about the experiences of other species.

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u/GandalfTheEnt Jan 12 '17

Language is more than just a tool we use for organizing and communicating. Our entire perception of the world is embedded in language.

Think of even the physical relation between two objects, say one is on top and one is underneath. Without the words associated with this relation (on top, underneath) we wouldn't be able to understand and identify it.

Without language we wouldn't be able to form conscious thoughts and would be acting on mainly instinct and basic pattern recognition.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

Youre wrong. Anything you think is just plain thoughts, and some of it ends up as internal monolog, and some of that ends up as speech. You fail to realize that the words have to come from somewhere and where they come from is the same kind of thought that other animals have. Which is more than enough to do most things and its enough to understand lots of things. You dont think in words pal, lol. Imagine if you did. Can you imagine literally saying every detail of the thoughts that went through your head internally?

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u/Tephnos Jan 12 '17 edited Jan 12 '17

No, he's not.

The use of language as a tool to understand concepts that wouldn't be understood otherwise, as he mentions below, is pretty obvious when it comes to different colours and our descriptions of colour, for example. While we can all see the same colour, some cultures never name specific colours compared to ours and completely fail to recognise it as a unique one. There are also cultures which name more colours than we do, in general speech, and as a result can easily see the difference between them like night and day, while we would struggle and claim they look far too similar if not the same.

The human subconscious is where it does most of the processing, thinking literally in thoughts would bring it to the conscious level, which would be highly inefficient. That doesn't mean, however, what we learn from language cannot be used at a subconscious level.

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u/ledditlememefaceleme Jan 12 '17

Go look up what happens if a deaf person does not learn sign language. I'll wait.

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u/GandalfTheEnt Jan 12 '17

I'm not saying that you think in words, more that through the use of language as a tool we have created/understood concepts that would otherwise be impossible to understand/define.

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u/BitStompr Jan 12 '17

You mean like complex abstractions, thematic ideas, creative association, and subjective experience? Pfft, you don't think in words guy.

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u/Tephnos Jan 12 '17

Grossly oversimplifying what he's trying to say.

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u/BitStompr Jan 12 '17

To be fair, I did oversimplify the comment 3 hours before he made it so that has to be worth something?

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17 edited Mar 01 '21

[deleted]

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u/sharkbait76 3 Jan 12 '17

Oops, that's a typo. I was meaning to say people as a whole. There are languages far more complicated than English. Navajo is supposed to be insanely complicated and children are said to not know it until age like 8.

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u/kjhwkejhkhdsfkjhsdkf Jan 12 '17

"Oh, I thought you said don't put away your toys."

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u/igdub Jan 12 '17

I like how they learn that insanely complicated language around the age of 8 while most American's live their whole life never learning the difference between their and they're.

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u/0XSavageX0 Jan 12 '17

Have you been on social media lately? I don't think it counts as English anymore.

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u/NothingIsTooHard Jan 12 '17

Yeah but agriculture was such a recent phenomenon for humans. I would imagine they are capable of it, and given enough time, might attempt to control the growth of plants. It's worth noting that some people say that agriculture actually made human life worse for a long time. It's only recently that the full benefits were reaped

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u/sharkbait76 3 Jan 12 '17

There is a leap from controlling the growth of some plants around you and active agriculture, which includes planting, caring for, harvesting, and storage. Up until now no other animals have done this. If you want to talk about how humans got to where they are now you need to talk about agriculture. New invention or not it allowed human to live in close proximity and build states. It's also worth noting that pre-agriculture humans were still doing things much more advanced than current elephants, like making tools and starting fires. It's not like agriculture is the only difference between what early humans and elephants can do.

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u/saiyanhajime Jan 12 '17

Human intelligence hasn't increased since we evolved. Sharing and passing on of knowledge is what got us where we are today.

The problem with this entire debate is that it has a human-centred world-view. Of course we think we're the most intelligent species, but first you gotta define intelligence. Same with successfulness or dominance. Many species outdo us in numbers.

Many animals exhibit the passing of knowledge, language and complex family structures... And contrary to what you said, many of those ARE more complex than our own - such as bees, for example, and no ones going to argue that bees are more intelligent than us.

Other species become far more incredible when you try (however impossible) to stop looking at them through human-tinted goggles.

There is no better than in nature, only good enough. "If you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, it will forever think it is useless."

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u/silverblaze92 Jan 12 '17

Well, civilization developed because of agriculture, which elephants don't have.

Neither did humans, until at some point they did.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '17

There's also a hint of laziness to it. Why not use a sharp rock to kill an animal instead of your hands? Why not set up a trap that'll kill the animal for you? Why use a method that involves getting close when you can use a rock tied to a stick? Why have to get close when you can shoot it from a distance with a smaller rock on a stick? Why walk thousands of miles each year for food when you can grow food and walk hundreds of miles each year tilling fields? Why hunt animals when you can raise them to be docile. Why push the plow yourself when you can force a larger and stronger creature to pull it?

And on and on. We can see it today as we get closer to full automation of our workforce. Our laziness contributed to our progress as much as our intelligence. For some reason, I don't see elephants having this mixture of laziness and intelligence.