Tool use by wild and captive elephants

Chevalier‐Skolnikoff, Suzanne; Liska, Jo

doi:10.1006/anbe.1993.1183

Cited by 90 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…While primates have formed a significant focus of research into tool use, the same effect of more frequent and diverse tool use in captivity has been noted in animals as varied as elephants [31], keas [32], small tree finches [33], rooks [34], cockatoos [35], rodents such as degus [36] and naked mole rats [37] and even gastropods [38]. The examples listed here are illustrative rather than exhaustive-of the 418 instances of animal tool use tabulated by Bentley-Condit & Smith [4], 120 or 28.7% were found in captivity alone.…”

Section: 'Captivity Bias' In Animal Tool Use (A) Animal Tool Use In Cmentioning

confidence: 97%

‘Captivity bias’ in animal tool use and its implications for the evolution of hominin technology

Haslam

2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Animals in captive or laboratory settings may outperform wild animals of the same species in both frequency and diversity of tool use, a phenomenon here termed ‘captivity bias’. Although speculative at this stage, a logical conclusion from this concept is that animals whose tool-use behaviour is observed solely under natural conditions may be judged cognitively or physically inferior than if they had also been tested or observed under controlled captive conditions. In turn, this situation creates a potential problem for studies of the behaviour of extinct members of the human family tree—the hominins—as hominin cognitive abilities are often judged on material evidence of tool-use behaviour left in the archaeological record. In this review, potential factors contributing to captivity bias in primates (including increased contact between individuals engaged in tool use, guidance or shaping of tool-use behaviour by other tool-users and increased free time and energy) are identified and assessed for their possible effects on the behaviour of the Late Pleistocene hominin Homo floresiensis . The captivity bias concept provides one way to uncouple hominin tool use from cognition, by considering hominins as subject to the same adaptive influences as other tool-using animals.

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Section: 'Captivity Bias' In Animal Tool Use (A) Animal Tool Use In Cmentioning

confidence: 97%

‘Captivity bias’ in animal tool use and its implications for the evolution of hominin technology

Haslam

2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…In many cases, the available evidence constitutes only a single reported instance of a particular individual making a particular tool, and provides little detail on method (e.g. Chevalier-Skolnikoff & Liska, 1993). This picture is as true of monkeys as it is of most other animals.…”

Section: Tool Using In Animals Other Than Apesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The manual skills and cognition that lie behind hominid tool use

Byrne

2004

The Evolution of Thought

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Tool use is an important aspect of being human that has assumed a central place in accounts of the evolutionary origins of human intelligence. This has inevitably focused a spotlight on any signs of tool use or manufacture in great apes and other non-human animals, to the relative neglect of skills that do not involve tools. The aim of this chapter is to explore whether this emphasis is appropriate. Could it be that we may learn as much about the origin of human intelligence from skilled manual behaviour in general? Suppose we take this broader view, accepting evidence from all manifestations of manual skill, what can we learn of the mental capacities of the great apes and ourselves? My own ultimate purpose is to use comparative evidence from living species to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the many cognitive traits that came together to make human psychology. The cognition of great apes is the obvious starting point, to trace the more primitive (i.e. ancient) cognitive aptitudes that are still important to us today. In this chapter, I focus on great ape cognition as it is expressed in manual skills, based on cognitive aspects of tool use and manufacture considered significant in the human evolutionary lineage.

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“…However this aspect of their biology offers little benefit if it exists in isolation, and so their well-developed cognitive processes (Bates et al, 2007;Chevalier-Skolnikoff and Liska, 1993;Moss, 1988;Byrne et al, 2009) and memory retention (Hakeem et al, 2005;Byrne et al, 2009) often act to support this ability. African elephants are able to garner information on kin-relationships (Wyatt, 2003), location (Bates et al, 2008) and breeding status of conspecifics (Wyatt, 2003), and potential threats (Bates et al, 2007) through olfaction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This high number of OR genes suggests that the species may have a superior olfactory ability to discriminate between structurally similar scents (Niimura et al, 2014), thereby potentially increasing their olfactory resolution. This, in conjunction with their problem solving abilities, memory retention and cognition function (Bates et al, 2007;Byrne et al, 2009;Chevalier-Skolnikoff and Liska, 1993;Hakeem et al, 2005;McComb et al, 2014;Moss, 1988), may contribute significant advantages in wayward scenarios such as traversing landmine-affected areas. However, critical to any attempts to understand the role landmines may play in these movement patterns, the potential of African elephants detecting TNT via olfaction first needed to be established.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%