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Asked by George to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 10 Mar 2017.
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Carrie Ijichi answered on 10 Mar 2017:
Brain size isn’t the only thing that affects how smart we are. Other things like the number of wrinkles on the surface are really important too (wonder if Einstein had a really wrinkly brain?!). Also, its the size of the brain in relation to the body of the animal. We have a crazy big brain for the size of our bodies which really helps us. Don’t forget we learning about animal intelligence all the time and its hard to measure (even in humans) so we’ve got to be careful how confident we are about how smart an animal is.
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Ellen Williams answered on 10 Mar 2017:
Great question! Elephants do have huge brains and we do know that they are very intelligent creatures. It depends on how we define efficiency because it is certainly the belief of some researchers that humans aren’t of any higher level of intellect than some of the most intelligent animals (such as elephants), it is just that our brain function is different.
I had a look around to see if I could find anymore specific information about elephant brains and I came across this absolutely fantastic blog post by Ferris Jabr. I don’t know how in depth you want to go but this article is well worth a read if you want to know a little bit more, it is extremely well written and sheds a little light on just how sophisticated elephants are https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/searching-for-the-elephants-genius-inside-the-largest-brain-on-land/
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Rupert Marshall answered on 11 Mar 2017:
Carrie answered this question really well. I’m not a brain expert so I’ll leave it with her!
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Ines Goncalves answered on 11 Mar 2017:
I’m not really sure how to answer this question. I don’t really know why elephants have such big brains or why despite having such big brains they don’t seem to be as clever as humans. But then again, intelligence is the ability to learn new things or adapt existing knowledge to new situations. By many measures, elephants are very smart, they have different types of vocalisations, including some they use of very long distance communication that we humans cannot hear; they recognise other individuals and form complex social bonds; they have very good long term memories and are much better than us at orientation than we are. For example, a family of elephants were translocated in Kruger, 300km north, to minimise conflict with humans where they were. Scientist monitored their behaviour for a month after the translocation took place and they published a paper on how the elephants walked all the back in 23 days. I would never have been able to do that, not in the bush, with a mobile phone with a GPS, people to ask for directions or signs to read.
Admittedly, elephants don’t sing or tell jokes, and they likely can’t do advanced algebra, but do they need to? Aren’t they perfectly adapted to live in the environment they live? The only threat to elephants is humans and human greed. So other than having to survive us, elephants are as smart as they need to be. And they’re probably a lot smarted than we think, we just haven’t studied and tested all their capabilities. -
Cedric Tan answered on 12 Mar 2017:
Interesting question! The size of the brain is not the only indicator of how intelligent an animal is, intelligence is also dependent on how much curvy surface area there is and how much of the brain is used.
Contrary to popular belief, elephants are very intelligent. They exhibit emotions, can solve problems and can recognise themselves in the mirror. Elephants are as smart as chimps, and dolphins. Perhaps we have not fully understood them to compare their intelligence with humans properly. We exhibit other features that make us seem more intelligent than elephant, but this may not be necessarily true.
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