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Vocal communication, self-awareness

Tue, 2007-11-20 21:14 by Robert · Forum/category:

We are undergraduate biology students at the University of Aberdeen working on a short paper/website dedicated to complex behaviours in elephants. I am particularly interested in self-awareness and vocal communication in African and Asian elephants. So far I have found only two articles on self-awareness issue:

Plotnik et al., 2007 J.M. Plotnik, F.B.M. de Waal and D. Reiss, Self-recognition in an Asian elephant, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103 (2007), pp. 17053–17057.

Povinelli, 1989 D.J. Povinelli, Failure to find self-recognition in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in contrast to their use of mirror cues to discover hidden food, Journal of Comparative Psychology 103 (1989), pp. 122–131.

Do you know if there are any other papers covering this topic?

Thank you!
Robert

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Complex behaviours

Wed, 2007-11-21 09:25 by jpoole

Hello Robert. You might wish to have a chat with Lucy Bates at University of Saint Andrews who is working with us on this topic. Otherwise there are quite a few interesting papers posted on our www.elephantvoices.org website that may be of interest to you. And I believe that there is a list of all of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants papers posted on this website, somewhere. You will have to do some detective work to find the list. Joyce

Hello Joyce, thank you for

Mon, 2007-11-26 19:50 by Robert

Hello Joyce, thank you for your answer! After some digging I managed to find a third article. It's still not much but should be enough to draw a conclusion about the research done so far. Perhaps someone will need it in future:

  • Povinelli, D. J. (1989). Failure to find self-recognition in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in contrast to their use of mirror cues to discover hidden food. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 103 (2), 122-131.
  • Plotnik, J. M., de Waal, F. B. M., & Reiss, D. (2007). Self-recognition in an Asian elephant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103 (45), 17053-17057.
  • Nissani, M. and Hoefler-Nissani, D. (2007). Absence of Mirror Self-Referential Behavior in Two Asian Elephants. Journal of Medical and Biological Sciences, 1 (1).

Robert

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