The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It would be equally interesting to determine the limit of its reasoning powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go through the motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but whether he would learn of himself to plane the rough surface smooth, and let the smooth ones remain untouched, is an open question. While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make chalk-marks on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw. One passage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has been given as a translation: "...I saw them writing letters on Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing, the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar- like manner."