Elephant Culture

I wanted to know if anyone has any information on elephants using "culture" like chimpanzees?

Fri, 2007-11-16 17:47 UTC:

I am writing a research paper on how complex the elephant is and the main points I wanted to emphasize on were the elephant’s complex social structure, communication, and the possible use of culture. I have been searching everywhere for something on culture use in elephants but really did not find much. What got me interested in elephants and their possible use of culture is the way the elephants at my local zoo (2 females who I volunteer and work with every Saturday) learned to take the peel off of citrus fruits they eat. Back in 2004, we had to house 2 other females from another zoo near by, till their exhibit was redone and enhanced. One of our females loved to scare her two guests so we had to separate ours from the other two. But in time, we noticed the other two ate their citrus by first taking of the peel and they did this by smashing the citrus (with foot or trunk) till the peel cracked open, and then stuck the tips of their trunks in and pulled out the fruit from the inside. Our elephants never in their life did that. They always just popped the whole fruit in their mouth. After a few months being near with their guest (but always separated by a barrier due to our elephants aggressiveness toward the others), our girls started to do the same thing, they started to take out the citrus peel like the other two elephants. Since the two groups were not together, we believe that the elephants might have used infrasound to communicate about peeling the citrus. I asked my former Biology professor, and he said that this might be a form of culture because this is a learned behavior passed down from one group to another. I think it is so fascinating how complex elephants are.

[Attachment by jpoole—please see comments below. admin]