Are elephants so smart that they can spot the difference when they hear people speaking different languages? Armed with a giant loudspeaker in the back of a land rover, it is a possibility that researchers have been exploring on the plains of Amboseli National Park in Kenya. We are a bit limited by how little we know about elephants, but the odd glimmers we get seem to be rather remarkable They have also been trying to see if elephants can count lions and figure out the age of other elephants. Elephants do not have good eyesight but their sense of hearing is acute. It is much more sensitive than ours. The same is true for their sophisticated sense of smell. The scientists on the research team have been playing sounds or laying down scents which elephants would encounter in nature, but doing so in clever ways that reveal elephant knowledge and thought processes. Mental skills Dick Byrne, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at St Andrew’s University has studied the cognitive abilities of primates and has been carrying out the experiments with elephants at Amboseli, using different scents to probe mental skills. He said: […]