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Have you guys seen this? I think it is pretty cool, but I can’t believe how much the paintings go for.
http://www.youtube.%20com/watch?%20v=_LHoyB81LnE (sorry, can’t get this first one to work…guess it is up to copy and pasting)
That was incredible!!! 😯
Here’s the link.
That was so sweet!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmI actually saw it on GMA a week or so ago. It was really quite something. I guess they were saying that any elephant could be taught to do that. All the times I looked at them at the zoo and never thought they were much smarter than any other animal there. 😳
Daaaang… taught or not, that elephant draws better than me! Man, I thought it was cool when Ruby (elephant at Phoenix zoo 10+ yrs ago) painted… she was much more of an abstract artist though 😀
I wonder if an elephant could paint a Windstone? But you would have to be careful he didn’t step on it – dragon pancake!
That was amazing. 😯 And the way it (she?) painted! It was all using “lines of motion,” not shapes (ovals, squares, triangles etc.). And she knew exactly where each line needed to start and end, and exactly how the line needed to go. Seems to me she had a very clear image of the finished product in mind, and much better spatial sense than I have. I’m going to have to watch some of the related clips.
I’ve always figured animal intelligence is a lot more intricate than we can tell, but something like this is both humbling and tremendously exciting. Art is one of the cherished “hallmarks of intelligence”: the drive to produce imagery that says something about the world, the use of symbols, the appreciation of colors and shapes that appeal are all skills that are generally considered complex and not thought of in the same sentence as what “mere animals” can achieve. But here we have a creature that has proven that elephants, at least, are quite capable of all of these skills.
I’m sure that these elephants are rewarded for painting and encouraged to paint. I’m also sure that the use of the materials had to be demonstrated to them–they didn’t figure out “this is a brush, this is paint, this is a surface to paint on.” From the look of things, it’s possible that this elephant hadn’t worked out “brush goes in paint pot, blue paint pot has blue paint” either. But even if that elephant was told to paint a symbol it had memorized–as opposed to truly creating an artwork on its own–she still managed to recreate that symbol gracefully and with a pleasing line. That elephant is an artist!
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