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Elephants have a nose for quantity.

Joshua M Plotnik1,2,3,4, Daniel L Brubaker3, Rachel Dale3

  • 1Department of Psychology, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY 10065; joshua.plotnik@gmail.com.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|June 5, 2019
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Summary

Elephants can discriminate between food quantities using only their sense of smell. This olfactory ability in quantity discrimination is comparable to visual abilities seen in other species.

Keywords:
comparative cognitionelephant cognitionelephantsnumerosityrelative quantity judgment

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Area of Science:

  • Animal cognition
  • Sensory perception
  • Olfactory discrimination

Background:

  • Animals frequently make decisions based on quantity, impacting survival and social dynamics.
  • Previous research on quantity discrimination primarily focused on visual cues across various species.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if elephants can differentiate between quantities using only their sense of smell.
  • To assess the role of olfactory sense in numerical cognition in elephants.

Main Methods:

  • An object-choice task was employed with elephants.
  • Elephants were presented with two containers of sunflower seeds with varying ratios.
  • The choice was based solely on olfactory information.

Main Results:

  • Elephants successfully discriminated between different quantities of food by smell.
  • Performance improved with larger relative differences in quantity.
  • Performance decreased with increasing ratios but was unaffected by absolute quantity.

Conclusions:

  • Elephants possess olfactory-based quantity discrimination abilities.
  • These findings suggest cross-modal similarities in numerical cognition.
  • Future research should consider sensory modality in cross-phylogenetic cognitive studies.