Do elephants really know how to draw or is this a clever marketing ploy?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Are elephants really artists? Can they actually paint flowers, trees, and even other elephants? Are they the only creatures on Earth, besides humans, who can create picturesque images? For several decades in a row, these questions have been asked by scientists from all over the world. And what a surprise it was when the answer to all these questions was found by itself …

Several years ago, scientist Richard Dawkins asked his friend, zoologist Desmond Morris, to watch a video on the Internet, filmed in Thailand, in which a young female elephant named Hong depicts a running elephant with a flower in its trunk. He wanted to know what his friend thought about this.

Desmond said.

According to Morris, what he saw was amazing, causing delight. After all, the elephant, in fact, without human help, painted a very impressive image that a human artist would not be ashamed to show:.

But nevertheless, for a long time the man did not leave the feeling that there was a catch somewhere, therefore, when he was in Thailand, he decided to find out the truth. He knew that Hong lived in an elephant conservation center in the country's High North and that he would not have time to get there during his short stay in Thailand.

But as it turned out, in addition to the place where the famous for the whole Internet Hong lives, in Thailand there are at least six elephant centers where they are engaged in painting. One of them, at Nong Nuche, was close enough to take a short look there. These centers were built for the purpose of keeping the elephant laborers who worked in the felling.

Then someone came up with a brilliant idea to set up elephant sanctuaries where, for a small fee, they could show animals to visitors. As a result, people began to arrange performances and all kinds of shows, and later painting sessions appeared.

The center that Desmond visited is a large leisure park nine miles from the thriving seaside resort of Pattaya. In addition to its exotic tropical gardens and orchid nursery, it boasts an impressive Thai boxing theater and highly sophisticated local folklore shows. Next to this theater is a large square arena for daily elephant shows. These performances, it turns out, are too reminiscent of old-fashioned circus shows, but they differ in two important ways.

Firstly, each animal has its own personal watchman, whose whole life is dedicated to its elephant. Secondly, most of the performance is designed for the audience to admire the skill of the elephants, and not laugh at them like clowns.

says Morris.

So are these cute mammals really artistic? The answer, as politicians like to say, is yes and no.

So what's really going on? The drawing session begins with three heavy easels rolling into position. Each easel has a large piece of white paper (30 x 20 inches) under a sturdy wooden frame. Each elephant stands in front of his easel and receives a brush filled with paint from his mahout. He carefully slips the brush into the end of her trunk for greater convenience.

Then the person stands to the side of the animal's neck and carefully watches as the elephant carefully begins to draw lines on the card. The empty brush is then replaced with another filled with paint, and painting continues until the painting is complete.

After the elephant turns to the audience, bows low and receives bananas as a reward. At the end of the painting session, the paintings are removed from the frames and put up for sale. They are quickly snapped up by people who were amazed at what they just saw.

For most of those present, what they saw seems almost a miracle. Elephants must surely be almost human in intelligence if they can paint pictures of flowers and trees in this way. What viewers do not notice is the actions of the mahouts when their animals are working.

This oversight is understandable because it is difficult to take your eyes off the brushes that make lines and spots. However, if you do this, you will notice that with every stroke and brushstroke, the mahout is tugging at his elephant by the ear.

He pushes it up and down to make the animal make a vertical line, or pulls it to the side to get a horizontal one. To create spots and blots, making them more saturated and vivid, he pulls his ear forward towards the canvas. So, unfortunately, the sketch that the elephant makes does not belong to him, but to his owner. There is no elephant invention, no creativity, only slavish copying.

Exploring further, after the show is over, it turns out that each of the so-called art animals always produces exactly the same image, time after time, day after day and week after week. Muk always draws a bouquet of flowers, Christmas - a tree, and Pimton - a climbing plant. Each elephant works according to a set schedule, guided by its owner.

Hence the inevitable conclusion: elephants are not artists. Unlike chimpanzees, they do not explore new patterns or redesign their work on their own. Outwardly, they really seem to be more advanced, but all this is deception.

This is an amazing trick invented for the show and siphoning money from visitors. Indeed, in fact, the human hand does not touch the body of the animal. The elephant's brain has to translate the tiny jolts she feels in her ear into attractive lines and spots.

And she has to place these marks on the white surface with great precision. This requires significant intelligence and muscle sensitivity that is truly extraordinary.

The viewer can still admire the pictures these animals make, even if their skill is related to muscle control rather than artistic ability.

Perhaps someday a more scientific approach will be applied to the painting of elephants, and one of these animals will be allowed to express itself spontaneously and perhaps start creating new images of its own design and changing them at will. If that happens, people will have to seriously consider opening an elephant art gallery.

Although only three elephants in Nong Nucha paint the paintings, there are sixteen others who perform other remarkable feats. Two of them are capable of rearing up and throwing a large dart into the air with mind-blowing precision.

And again, back to the fine arts. An elephant named Karishma paints a picture at the ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Dunstable, England. Every year, Karishma's paintings are on display as part of the zoo's Elephant Evaluation Weekend, during which donations are accepted to fund conservation research.

And despite the fact that elephants do not paint according to their whim, these animals should be given credit for the fact that they skillfully and almost imperceptibly for the viewer carry out the commands of their master, creating masterpieces.

Not only elephants were able to win the sympathy of people,.