How To Analyze An Elephant Experiment

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Elephants

When studying animals in the wild the things that they do naturally may be interpreted in many different ways. In the articles “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk”, “Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task”, and “Elephants Console Each Other” the scientists all used the same way to find out different things about elephants. The scientists set up experiments to figure out how elephants will act in certain decisions although one of the experiments happened naturally unlike the others.

In the first article, “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk” the elephants were put through an experiment where they would have to pull a rope in order to get a treat. In order for the experiment to work they had to “work together”. When they didn’t pull the rope together and didn’t get the treat it “taught them to pull together.” However the scientists
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The elephants, when trained, only had simple commands to pick up the rope and when to go and stop. The elephants, when untrained, were only released in their lane with no instruction. According to the graph included in the article the trained elephants when up about 1 to 2% in success rate over the three days they were experimented on; the untrained elephants success rate went up about 35% between the first and second day of experimenting. This shows us that elephants can pick up on things fast. This experiment compares to the experiment in the first article because they both resulted in getting a treat, but the purpose for doing the experiment were different. In the first one they were seeing if the elephants could work together and in the second one they were seeing the difference between trained and untrained elephants. However in the third article they observe the Elephants in the