Researchers from the Department of experimental psychology at England's Cambridge University recently revealed that the mighty elephant is not only strong, but intelligent too. In fact, so much so, that it has been put in the elite category of the world's smartest animals, along with the chimpanzee, dolphin and common crow. Not only that, these highly social animals are very cooperative and quick to help out fellow members in distress.

The scientists, who conducted the tests in Thailand, came to this conclusion following various experiments, all involving placing food on a platform on the ground behind a fence. Attached to either end of the platform were ropes. In order to drag the platform under the fence and get to the food, the Nellies had to pull the ropes. However, they would have to do it as a team and, at the same time, or else they would end up with just the rope.

The researchers then brought in six pairs of elephants and conducted the same tests about 40 times over two days. To their surprise, not only did each pair figure it out, but most of them got to the food 80% of the time.

They then tried to test if the elephants understood that they could really not do this alone, by releasing one elephant first and then his counterpart a full 45 seconds later. Once again the land mammals surprised them, by quickly learning to patiently wait for his/her partner, before attempting to pull the rope - By the second day, their success rate averaged about 97%.

In fact, one young one surprised them with her innovative solution. She merely put her foot on the rope so that it would not budge and then waited for her partner to do all the work!

If that wasn't enough proof, the researchers took the experiment one step further by keeping only one rope accessible to the elephants and coiling the other. Once again, the Nellies quickly figured out that one rope alone was not going to get them the grub, and hence, did not even give it a try.

Experts believe that the research gave us an important insight into how elephants can not only learn, but also, collaborate with each other to complete tasks - Something that we thought only primates were able to do. Hopefully, it will also help us find ways to protect them in the wild, a cause of big concern given the dwindling numbers of Asian elephants.

Resources: theaustralian.com.au, pysorg.com