One man's struggle against impermanence
John Wilkins is an aged, eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow Sessional Lecturer at the University of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books. Species Definitions: A Sourcebook (Peter Lang) will come out in 2008; Species: A History of an Idea (University of California Press) will appear, it is hoped, in early 2009. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids.
If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The contract ran out ...
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Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)
Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 3rd Edition (Bradford Books)
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Category: General Science • Social evolution • Species and systematics
Posted on: March 30, 2008 8:42 PM, by John S. Wilkins
Watch the video under the fold, from Chang Mai in Thailand. There's a moment where you realise what the elephant is representing, and a shock that comes when you see that it is representing something. I don't know if it's been trained to do this but it looks real to me.
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Comments
It's not unbelievable. Recognizing the image in a line drawing takes a small amount of skill but no super mental power. It's just a way of by-passing part of the visual cortex and going straight to the edge detection. Drawing an image is obviously a bit tougher.
OTOH, Would a mouse recognize an animated line drawing of another mouse (assuming proper frame rate for their visual system)? I suspect it would but I cannot imagine a mouse actually drawing. They cannot even recognize themselves in the mirror.
Posted by: John Vreeland | March 30, 2008 9:23 PM
I think the flower at the end is very telling indeed. That bit screams out to me that the image design was not by the elephant. I might have been persuaded that the elephant deliberately sought to represent an elephant, if it were not for the outsized flower, which looks like a highly anthropomorphic touch targeted at a tourist audience.
Posted by: Duae Quartunciae | March 30, 2008 9:34 PM
Even if it's trained behavior, and I pretty much believe it is, it's still absolutely amazing. I mean, just think about it.
And I'm also fascinated by my own gut reaction. From John's intro I knew pretty much what to expect and it's somehow clear from the second stroke on what's it going to be. But at exactly the same moment as the audience in the video, I experienced the same sudden jolt, or surge in awareness, or awe, or whatever.
If the brief coexistence with the Neanderthals turns out to be true, the last time one of "us" stood face-to-face with someone totally not us but equally self-aware was about 30,000 years ago, and even that seems to have been only a brief interlude.
The mere thought to meet someone who's so other that even Levinas's concept wouldn't even come close, and who displays the same level of self-awareness that we do, is thoroughly exhilarating.
^_^J.
p.s. John Vreeland no offense but I find you comment completely incomprehensible.
Posted by: gyokusai | March 30, 2008 10:22 PM
I have heard of these elephants before. They were on some kind of nature show awhile back. At that point their paintings were a lot more abstract - think Jackson Pollock. I tend to think that there is some training involved in getting more realistic paintings from them.
Posted by: afarensis | March 30, 2008 10:25 PM
I have to agree with Duae here. I could accept, with some small convincing, that an elephant could draw a representational portrait of an elephant. But to paint something fantastic, in other words, to imagine something that has never been, and paint it, I believe is beyond the capability of even these very intelligent animals. That being the case, I have to believe this was a matter of rewarding the animal for performing the correct motor functions and that it has painted the same image many times over.
Posted by: Size | March 30, 2008 10:29 PM
But ask yourselves this: could a human paint so well without being taught either?
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 30, 2008 10:49 PM
John,
I think I might be with Duae and Size here, and that you slightly misinterpreted their point. Training is one thing, but training is another. I mean, have they been training this elephant to paint this exact picture, over and over again, to the point where it has simply memorized the sequence of moves? Can it draw variations that are approximately just as good -- say, with the trunk down instead of up, or with the tail down, or facing the other direction, etc. Or can it just do this one precise image.
Myself, I keep wondering if maybe this isn't so far off from the horse doing math -- maybe the trainer (who is out of the shot on the other side of the elephant) is giving hand gestures to direct the elephant, or has his hand on the elephant's shoulder and giving subtle directions. This could even be accidental on the part of the trainer, as with IIRC the horse case.
All of this is not, by the way, to discredit or even really question the intelligence of elephants or (some) animals, or the amazing performance here.
Time for an "I have a black friend even" story. This elephant can draw better than I can. Really. In high school, I once practiced for hours (yes, I was bored...) various tasks. I found that I could memorize up to about a hundred breeds of horse (I had flash cards), for example. But despite tens or even hundred of hours of repetition, my attempt at drawing the outline of a cow -- supposed to look much like the elephant's drawing -- was still more far-side stick-figure-ish pathetic than anything else.
Posted by: Kevin | March 30, 2008 11:42 PM
This is nothing new. You know those cave paintings of mammoths in France. Those weren't painted by human hunters; they're self portraits.
Posted by: John McKay | March 30, 2008 11:59 PM
Kevin, I knew the difference when I made the comment. I'm not promoting the elephant's capability, I was challenging the widespread assumption that humans are somehow better than that elephant. Only a very few humans can equal those skills, as you note. Even fewer can do it at will.
John, that's what they were saying on the Paleo list I got the link from. A belated hat tip.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 31, 2008 12:11 AM
...
What is the deal with the man carrying the easel behind the working one (at approx 7:10) then we see that easel has (apparently) a bunch of flowers on it, visible briefly at approx 7:20..??
Is the elephant simply mimicking on of those..?? Or has another elephant drawn those or..??
Interesting.
...tom...
.
Posted by: ...tom... | March 31, 2008 1:12 AM
My first thought is "how could this be done" and my second was "can it paint anything else?"
I suppose I should withhold judgement, but I don't yet believe that elephants can draw. More evidence please.
Posted by: John Morales | March 31, 2008 5:32 AM
Sorry, I can't resist: After the obligatory web search, I found this.
Posted by: John Morales | March 31, 2008 5:42 AM
I read that the trainer stands next to the elephant and gives it commands on what to do with the painting (something about tugging on its ear in different ways depending on the stroke needed). Not sure how accurate that is, but the elephant does pause a lot as if it's waiting for the next instruction. In any case, it's quite impressive training.
Posted by: Carlie | March 31, 2008 10:24 AM
This sort of art is not limited to elephants.
Posted by: Bob O'H | March 31, 2008 11:36 AM
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 31, 2008 12:27 PM
Carlie and Sven; Have you ever been to Chang Mai? A bit over twenty years ago I watched a similar display of the artistic ability of elephants (likely different elephants) while working in Thailand. I have no doubt that a great deal of training was involved but the trainers did not provide any overt cues to the animals while they were painting (Or the cues were so subtle as to constitute the first demonstrated case of human-elephant telepathy!). By the way, the same elephant did paint different pictures, objects of various kinds and creatures in various poses.
Posted by: Tim | March 31, 2008 1:32 PM
Either Sven DiMilo or Carlie have the correct explanation; there is no way an elephant can do that on its own - produce an original, meticulously controlled, representational image. This is a far more difficult feat than some apparently think; it's a matter of what to leave out while painting as it is what to put in. Humans can do it; nonhuman animals can't. What is depicted here is only impressive as an elaborate Skinnerian or 'Clever Hans'-type animal training trick.
Posted by: Colugo | March 31, 2008 1:36 PM
The elephant has been trained to do this. I've no doubt that this 'trick' is very lucrative for the trainer. My worry is how the elphant was corrected during the long training.I suspect not with kind words. This is just exploiting elephants for the tourist trade.
Posted by: Sara Little | March 31, 2008 3:12 PM
I know how this trick works--the painting elephant is looking at an elephant holding a flower just out of camera view! It's merely painting what it sees.
Posted by: mark | March 31, 2008 5:05 PM
It doesn't matter if the elephant was trained or not - surely it was to some extent. But just consider the coordination and un-aided long-term concentration that it took to produce that picture. If it's not faked somehow, it's still remarkable. The picture was of an elephant, and elephants are one of the few animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror (they have a proven concept of self).
Posted by: jeff | March 31, 2008 9:23 PM
That's true, jeff, and I have no intention of denigrating the intelligence of elephants, but there's no evidence (granted it would be difficult to obtain!) that the painting elephant has any idea that it has painted an elephant. It could just have easily been trained to paint (over and over again) a Volkswagen or a sea anemone.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 31, 2008 10:45 PM
To further Jeff's comment: do you smarty-pants "oh, it's been trained" people have any idea how much brain-power it takes to physically do what that elephant is doing, trained or not?
With a very few notable exceptions, a human would struggle to do what that elephant is doing with any organ other than our fingers, and we have more nervous tissue and brain real estate devoted to our fingers and hands than most other mammals have brain. Saying "it's been trained" denigrates the capicity to be trained to do that at all. If anyone would like to take up the argument that the "mental" capacity to do something is somehow different from having the neurological pathways, I think we could have a very interesting debate on our hands ;)
Posted by: Chris L | April 1, 2008 2:24 AM
Come on guys -- it's an April fools' joke. Can't you all see that it is a guy wearing an elephant trunk suit on his arm and doing the painting? You only see the first couple of feet of the trunk doing the picture, don't you? First they show you the whole elephant and then from then on, you only see this arm-like thing holding a brush.
April Fool!
(Just kidding.)
Posted by: Atanu Dey | April 1, 2008 8:21 AM
Actually, I'd like to see some evidence for all these assertions.
Posted by: David Marjanović | April 1, 2008 1:55 PM
Atanu Dey: Actually, I was also bothered by the way the scene is shot to only show the end of the trunk, and had much the same suspicion.
Posted by: David Harmon | April 1, 2008 5:03 PM
This site argues that this is faked - that is, guided by human intervention, and gives examples of unfaked elephant art.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | April 1, 2008 8:41 PM
Yeah, humans can produce art without being trained. We have a creative ability that does not require any medium of communication from which we might learn a skill. We can clearly create new things. And so can dolphins:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1041454/dolphin_play_bubble_rings/
I thought this was much more interesting than the elephant, because the elephant is obviously trained in his creation, but the dolphin is clearly just being a creative badass.
Posted by: Gerg | April 2, 2008 4:30 PM
We went to this elephant show when we were in Chiang Mai last winter. There's some input from the handler as they pick the brush and paint color. But the elephants do the work, and interestingly, some elephants are much better than others. One in particular, whose name I forget, did way better paintings than the others.
Posted by: QrazyQat | April 2, 2008 7:12 PM
I was interested to read gyokusai's comment:
"The mere thought to meet someone who's so other that even Levinas's concept wouldn't even come close, and who displays the same level of self-awareness that we do, is thoroughly exhilarating."
One of several things that struck me about the drawing is: why would a mind so different from ours produce art that looks exactly like a human kid's drawing? I was waiting for a yellow circle with lines coming out to represent the sun.... For me, that really suggested training or "Clever Hans"-- though remember that Hans' trainer was unaware that he was giving the "counting horse" signals.
Posted by: Tina Rhea | April 2, 2008 7:32 PM
I don't know about you, Tina, but compared to this elephant's drawing, my own childhood attempts at art lacked, umh, perspective, to say the least. Curiously, I'd support your argument re training, but precisely because the drawing strikes me as too sophisticated on the one hand, and too suspiciously pleasing on the other. Too well-formed. Which would, as I see it, rule out the Clever-Hans-Effect even if it were a cognitive task comparable to arithmetic which it isn't---I don't think you can provide (in-)voluntary cues that would trigger a certain motif or motif development that would turn out as unmessy as this one.
^_^J.
Posted by: gyokusai | April 4, 2008 10:05 PM