Elephant paints self portrait

Are you ready to be stunned? This is exactly why I started this blog; sharing something I never could have imagined. Click on the title of this thread to watch the video.

While it is likely that there was some training involved in what we see here, that doesn’t really detract from the amazement we might feel at seeing an animal, other than the human animal, paint a picture.

This skill involves a whole host of cognitive and physical skills that rival the capacity of the average four year old child. Unless the elephant is painting from its memory of an identical image, which is certainly possible and even likely, we see here a surprising awareness of scale and depth.

And if it were true that the elephant was painting an original image, we may have to seriously reassess the unique nature of our creativity. Perhaps some animals are able not only to experience but to reinterpret the world around them in a manner we thought only humans were able.