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Figure B3.2 Two elephants cooperate to pull in a table with food rewards at the Thai Elephant Conservation
Center in Lampang, Thailand. Source: Plotnik et al. 2011; photograph: Joshua Plotnik.

movements across large distances to perma- ment with captive Asian elephants. The sub-
nent sources of food and water during jects were provided with branches and were
drought (Moss et al. 2011). Several experi- observed modifying them to use as tools to
ments have reported elephants’ abilities to swat flies (Hart et al. 2001). Another experi-
discriminate quantities of food (Irie‐Sugimoto mental study observed elephants blowing
et al. 2009; Perdue et al. 2012; Irie et al. 2018; food to within their reach, which the authors
Plotnik et al. 2019) make summations about argued could indicate the elephants’ use of air
such quantities (Irie and Hasegawa 2012), and as a tool (Mizuno et al. 2016). In a demonstra-
understand means–end relationships (Irie tion of insightful problem solving, one captive
and Hasegawa 2012). Unlike many primate elephant was also observed using a plastic
species, elephants are not widely recognised cube as a tool to stand on to obtain out‐ of‐
for their tool‐use abilities, a characteristic reach food (Foerder et al. 2011).
thought to be an important component of the
evolution of physical cognition (Byrne 1997).
It is possible that elephants’ feeding ecology Implications and Future
does not require the extractive foraging tech- Directions of Elephant Research
niques leading to tool use in primates and
perhaps their highly flexible trunk acts as a Research on the cognitive abilities of ele-
tool instead. Wild elephants have been phants is important from a theoretical and
seen using branches for body care such as applied perspective. Since elephants have
scratching (Chevalier‐Skolnikoff and Liska evolved similar cognitive abilities to primates
1993), which prompted a controlled experi- but have evolved in evolutionarily distant