Сити их сургуулийн судлаачид Азийн заанууд (Elephas maximus) хоол хүнсэндээ хүрэхийн тулд импульсээ хянаж, оновчтой шийдвэр гаргах чадвартай болохыг туршилтаар баталжээ.
Тайландын Голден Трайангл Азийн зааны сангийн 16 заанд хийсэн энэхүү судалгаагаар амьтад ил тод саадыг тойрч, хоол хүнсээ олж авахдаа өөрийн хяналтын чадвараа хэрхэн ашиглаж байгааг судалсан байна. Заанууд тунгалаг хайрцагны цаана харагдах жимсэнд шууд хүрэх гэхээсээ илүүтэй, хайрцагны нээлттэй хэсгийг олж ашиглах замаар хоолоо авчээ. Энэ нь тэднийг харагдах байдалд хуурталгүй, өмнө нь сурсан туршлагадаа тулгуурлан зөв үйлдэл хийж буйг харуулж байна.
Судлаачид хайрцагны байрлалыг өөрчлөхөд заанууд хэсэг хугацаанд саатсан нь тэдний тархинд тодорхой хариу үйлдэл үүсгэж байсныг илтгэжээ. Ялангуяа ахимаг насны заанууд шинэ нөхцөл байдалд дасан зохицоход илүү хүндрэлтэй байсан нь тэдний танин мэдэхүйн үйл ажиллагаа нас ахих тусам өөрчлөгдөж болохыг харуулж байна.
Энэхүү судалгааны үр дүн нь амьтдын тархины хэмжээ болон өөрийгөө хянах чадвар хоорондоо эерэг хамааралтай гэсэн онолыг дэмжиж байна. Энэ чадвар нь заануудын нарийн төвөгтэй нийгмийн харилцаа болон амьд үлдэх стратегид чухал үүрэг гүйцэтгэдэг болохыг эрдэмтэд онцоллоо. PLOS One сэтгүүлд хэвлэгдсэн уг бүтээл нь амьтдын оюуны чадамжийг ойлгоход чухал ач холбогдолтой юм.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
After a long day at work, it can be a struggle to resist the urge to just order food delivery instead of checking the fridge first.
But when you do muster up the willpower to reheat the leftovers instead, you’ve got your inhibitory control to thank.
Humans probably weren’t the first animals to master this ability. It seems pretty important to survival, and experiments have shown many different animals can resist their impulses, to varying degrees.
For the first time, a team of researchers led by psychologists Sydney Hope and Joshua Plotnik of City University of New York has used a classic psychology experiment to show that Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can resist their impulses to get food in a more effective way.
They’ve recently published their results in the journal PLOS One.
They collaborated with a team at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in Thailand, where 16 Asian elephants aged 4 to 60 years were tested with the detour paradigm.
The detour paradigm is a classic psychological test where a subject (in this case, the elephants) is presented with a goal (in this case, some tasty fruit).
But to test the subject’s inhibitory control, the researchers place a barrier to reaching that goal via the path of least resistance. An alternate route must be taken, forcing the subject to act against their impulses.
In the case of the elephants, this involved putting the fruit in a transparent box. The elephants were used to reaching into a black box for food, as part of a familiarization task prior to the test trials.
But the invisible barrier was, presumably, a strange experience for the elephants: as far as the researchers knew, the animals had no prior experience with transparent materials.
The elephants could see and smell the fruit through small, impenetrable holes in the front of the box, but were unable to reach it directly.
If the elephants reached around to another face of the box, however, there was an opening through which they could grab the fruit with their trunks – as they had experienced with the black box.
“The test trials should have been more difficult because, to reach the food reward, elephants needed to inhibit the impulse to reach straight toward the food that they could see and smell in front of them and, instead, continue to detour around the box in the way that they had learned during the familiarization trials,” the researchers explain in their paper.
They captured all attempts at this detour paradigm on camera, and interpreted them in detail: how long it took the elephant to touch the box, find the open side, grab the food, etc.
“When faced with a transparent surface after being trained to detour around an opaque barrier (i.e., the ‘knowing/acting mismatch’), elephants did not show any difference in latency to enter the opening, and continued to quickly detour around the transparent barrier,” the authors report.
“This may provide evidence that elephants exhibit very strong inhibitory control; however, it may also indicate that the transparent surface did not elicit a strong prepotent response.”
In other words, the elephants didn’t seem to be fooled by the transparent barrier.
But once their trunks were inside the perspex box, they did spend more time ‘exploring’ its interior, displaying their curiosity about this peculiar see-through material.
The researchers also tried turning the box around, so that the opening was on a different face than they were used to. This adjustment did delay the elephants’ search for food, though ultimately they still figured it out.
“This ‘characteristic error pattern’ of a slower latency to enter suggests that switching box orientations evoked a prepotent response, making it a valid measure of inhibitory control,” the authors report.
They also noticed older elephants had a harder time adapting to the changes, which could be a signal of waning cognitive function.
It’s far from a conclusive study on elephant intelligence, but it’s a start. Animals capable of this kind of impulse control tend to have more complex social lives, something we know elephants certainly depend on.
Related: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children
In the very least, it can be an inspiration to those of us who may be tempted to reach directly for the delivery app rather than checking what’s already in the fridge first.
“The evidence for strong inhibitory control in Asian elephants that we found in this study agrees with the general positive relationship between brain size and inhibitory control ability that is found across other taxa,” the authors conclude.
The research was published in PLOS One.
This article was fact-checked by Michael Irving and edited by Michael Irving. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know.
