"In three years of intensive field work, I've only witnessed one case of the death of an elephant," explained Sanjeeta. "It's so rare - but almost everyone has a camera nowadays." Simply using search terms like "death of elephants" and "elephant reactions to death", they found 24 cases of the animals interacting with the dead bodies of others."In three years of intensive field work, I've only witnessed one case of the death of an elephant," explained Sanjeeta. "It's so rare - but almost everyone has a camera nowadays." Simply using search terms like "death of elephants" and "elephant reactions to death", they found 24 cases of the animals interacting with the dead bodies of others.
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Video caption,
Elephants in mourning: Footage of Asian elephants shows a mother carrying her dead calf
Groups of elephants were filmed patting a deceased family members with their trunks or seemingly attempting to revive them with kicks. They even gathered, vigil-like, next to remains. "We also heard vocalisations - low rumbling sounds - that I haven't heard before," said Nachiketha. '
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"The most striking thing for me though was calf carrying," he said. "They'll sometimes pick up a dead calf with their trunk and drag it. There have even been cases of a female elephant using tusks to carry her dead calf."
Whether this can be described as the elephant equivalent of grief or mourning is difficult to conclude, said Sanjeeta. But their apparent interest in death says something about how these animals think - and how intelligent they are. It also shows that there is evidence of rare displays of animal intelligence in the seemingly endless video library that is YouTube.
You certainly do not have to be an animal researcher to disappear down a rabbit hole of online animal videos. But scientists are increasingly mining this openly available source of video data. Scientific insights are being drawn from some unlikely - and comically entertaining - online footage.
"My favourite is a crow using what looks like a plastic lid as a snowboard on a roof," recalled Prof Ximena Nelson from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
The clip Ximena cites was apparently filmed through the window of a building in a Russian town. The crow stands on a jar lid and slides down a snowy roof. It then flies back up and repeats the exercise. It appears to be having fun.
"It's playing, but it's also innovating in that it's using a tool," says Ximena. "So here, you have an instance of tool-use for fun. I think that says a lot about how smart that crow is, but also that it's capable of innovating in a very unusual scenario."
Ximena pointed out that thousands of researchers spending hours outside, trying to make observations of crows, might never witness such behaviour - let alone record it.
"Animals playing" - with other species, or with unusual objects - "One of my students, for example - who is looking for instances of play in animals that haven't been described before - went down this exact rabbit hole [during the pandemic]," said Ximena. "They said, well, I can't collect data in the field right now, so I'll collect it from YouTube." There is more footage available for study of species of the furry of feathery variety. Fewer people capture and upload videos of insects or other invertebrates. (Although peacock spider dancing appears to be its own category.) It is particularly helpful though in providing a window of access to difficult locations, and to difficult-to-study species.
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