Elephants Get the Point of Pointing.

The New York Times October 20, 2013

Summary
Pointing, in the animal kingdom, is a very rare gift. While most humans are able to develop the
sophisticated skill at a very young age, many considerably smart animals are not able to do so.
Based on previous experiments, scientists have determined that the animals who understand
pointing are mostly domesticated mammals, such as dogs. New hypotheses recently caused
scientists to rethink whether or not social wild mammals have the ability to understand pointing,
specifically elephants.
Dr. Richard W. Byrne, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, and his graduate student
Anna Smet decided to test 11 elephants to determine their pointing capabilities. To do so, they
placed two identical buckets next to each other where the elephants could see. They then
carefully placed fruit into one of the two buckets, unknown to the elephants. After pointing to
one of the buckets, the scientists recorded whether or not the elephant chose the bucket they
pointed to. The elephants picked the right bucket 67.5% of the time, leading scientists to
question whether or not they had previously underestimated the intelligence of elephants.
In order to further prove the validity of the data, Anna Smet also let the elephants choose the
buckets randomly, without any pointing. This data showed that without seeing her point, they
simply chose buckets at random. The results of the experiment show that members of the animal
kingdom are much more sophisticated than they were originally thought to be. Scientists now
want to investigate into other highly social animals abilities to pass the pointing test.