UW Researchers: Elephants Solve Problems with Personality

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2021-06-26 08:30:04

Just as humans have their own individual personalities, new research in the Journal of Comparative Psychology shows that elephants have personalities, too. Moreover, an elephant’s personality may play an important role in how well that elephant can solve novel problems.

The article was written by Lisa Barrett and Sarah Benson-Amram in the University of Wyoming’s Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab, led by Benson-Amram. It may be viewed here.

The authors of the paper tested 15 Asian elephants and three African savanna elephants in three zoos across the country -- the San Diego Zoo, the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park and the Oklahoma City Zoo -- with the help of elephant caretakers.

Previous work from Barrett and Benson-Amram demonstrated that Asian elephants can use water as a tool to solve a novel problem -- and reach a tasty marshmallow reward -- in what’s called the floating object task. This time, the authors designed new novel tasks, as well as personality tests, for the elephants.

“We took a comprehensive approach by using three different problem-solving tasks and three types of personality assessments to determine if individual personality played a role in which elephants were able to solve these tasks,” Barrett says. “Since we couldn’t give the elephants a personality test like the ones you’re familiar with online, we had to think creatively.”