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Elephants are capable of displaying empathy to another in distress, a new study suggests.
Published on the PeerJ website, the study looked at 26 Asian elephants in Thailand and found that elephants reassured those showing signs in distress by vocalization and touch. Elephants join the ranks of other animals with empathetic capabilities, including great apes, canines and corvids.
Researchers watched elephants at the Elephant Nature Park in the Chiang Mai province of Thailand between April 2008 and February 2009. Researchers would watch the animals, focusing on spontaneous interaction and behavior of the animals.
“Elephants are an interesting study species because of their complex social behavior and close bonding with family members,” study authors wrote. “They often act as allomothers (non-maternal infant caretakers) toward others’ offspring, and respond immediately to the vocalizations of these individuals... They are also known for their “targeted helping,” or directed assistance that takes the specific needs of others into account (e.g., helping to lift and coordinated bracing of injured, dying or otherwise prostrate family members). Targeted helping is viewed as a sign of empathic perspective-taking.”
Indications of stress among infant elephants include a roar or squealing vocalization, and the animals raise the head and tail, extend ears and raise or stiffen their trunk outward.
Adults will respond to those distress calls with roars, rumbles and trumpeting. Similarly, those signals can express the adult elephant’s agitation. Additional reassuring signals included initiating physical contact with the distressed animal.
Researchers found that adult elephants were more likely to respond with reassuring signals following another elephant’s distress signal than in control periods.
