Comments on: Elephants Are Not Ethnic-Blind

By: Lurchgs

Lurchgs — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:44:32 +0000

So.. Elephants profile..If It happens in nature, why is it frowned upon when the police do it?

By: Sean Peters

Sean Peters — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:55:32 +0000

Prazzie: A particularly interesting case involved a British lady with reddish hair who came to hunt a lion.It was always my understanding that cats (and most other mammals) were red-green color blind. Perhaps the lion remembered her smell?

By: DocAmazing

DocAmazing — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:12:05 +0000

Not elephantine, but discriminating nonetheless, I give you the movie “White Dog” from 1982:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084899/Dovetails with Prazzie’s stories, but much more North American.

By: Mooser

Mooser — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:24:35 +0000

I wonder if Zebrafish can distinguish harmless aquarists like me, from mad biologists who julienne their spinal cords. I hope so. Lest the end be swift and terrible and certain.

By: Michael X

Michael X — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 05:12:11 +0000

I’m always thrilled to read the continuing evidence that animals are smarter than we previously imagined. Evermore evidence for evolutionary lineage. Now show me a primate that statistically throws poo more often at creationists than normal people and I’ll die at that moment a happy man.On a side note, I wonder what animal rights activists will make of this?

By: Skemono

Skemono — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:00:25 +0000

Oh my god, John Van Evrie was right!

By: Alan Kellogg

Alan Kellogg — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:51:56 +0000

I recall a news story on the use of Ghambian Giant Jumping Rats in searching out landmines scattered around during one of a number of small wars in Africa. The story noted that the animal’s biggest drawback was its inability to reliably discriminate between people, being ready to bond with most anyone who said hello.

By: Anon

Anon — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:49:41 +0000

Personally, I get the same sense of satisfaction hearing about elephants attacking their tormentors, as I do when I hear about a bull goring goring a toreador or cracking a rodeo riders head open.

By: Prazzie

Prazzie — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:50:14 +0000

I have heard of several instances here in South Africa where elephants in captivity (game farms, not cages) have shown extreme aggression towards white people, singling them out in groups and sometimes even tracking groups of people, ambushing them and attacking the white people even if black people are closer.I have been told that this is because elephants are exposed to white people in the form of vets or hunters and associate them with pain. Oftentimes the elephants are transported to the farms as calves and held in smaller holding pens before being released. During this time they are fed and petted by workers who tend to be black, reinforcing the stereotype that white people are “bad” and black people are “good”.One has to wonder how good their memories really are – if they were exposed to both “good” and “bad” black AND white people, would they start singling out people from both races with certain features?This doesn’t only happen with elephants, though. A particularly interesting case involved a British lady with reddish hair who came to hunt a lion. She shot at one, but only wounded it and it got away. She returned to South Africa the following year to try again. While part of a large (about 7 people, if I recall correctly) hunting party, a lion stormed, seemingly out of nowhere, into the group, ignored everyone in its way and targeted her specifically. She was severely injured, but survived. The lion was killed and identified as the one she had wounded the year before.

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:36:28 +0000

Don Burkins: Or, perhaps the boundaries surrounding humanity aren’t so absolute as most of us think? Given that many dogs can distinguish among individuals, I find it no surprise that elephants can tell hunters from farmers by observation!