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Box B3  Elephant  ognition: An  verviee  193

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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
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