Decades of deforestation and overdevelopment in Thailand have led to human-elephant conflict, sometimes with deadly consequences. Now, scientists may have a solution after studying elephant behavior.
A crew from CBS News' 60 Minutes recently spent a week with TWCF grantee Dr. Joshua Plotnik and his elephant research team at their field sites in Lampang and Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
The resulting segment, featured below, explores the researchers' efforts to understand elephant cognition and how their findings are being used to reduce conflicts between wild elephants and local communities.
WATCH THE BELOW VIDEO TO LEARN MORE.
Key Takeaways:
Over the past century, Thailand's wild elephant population has dwindled from 100,000 to 4,400 due to deforestation, reducing their natural habitat by more than half. The loss of habitat forces elephants to invade farms and villages for food, causing significant damage and leading to fatalities of both elephants and humans. “When you reduce the space that wildlife has, they need to figure out how to find the resources they need — and sometimes those resources are in crop fields,” Plotnik explains.
Research shows elephants exhibit individual personality traits, such as bravery or fearfulness, which influence their behavior and interactions with humans. With TWCF funding, Plotnik is studying individual and collective intelligence in Asian elephants. An associate professor in Hunter College's Psychology Department, Plotnik leads the Comparative Cognition for Conservation Lab and the Animal Behavior & Conservation Graduate Programs. For the past 13 years, he's led the only research team inside Thailand dedicated to understanding elephant psychology.
One of Plotnik’s most striking discoveries is the variation in elephant personalities and problem-solving abilities, insights gleaned through years of controlled experiments and field studies. His team’s "puzzle box" experiment, designed by post doctoral researcher Sarah Jacobson, demonstrates how elephants, much like humans, exhibit a wide range of innovation and persistence. The puzzle box is a device with three metal doors containing a banana reward inside. Elephants have to manipulate the doors using different methods — sliding, pushing, or pulling — to access the reward. Over the course of the team's 2-year experiment, 176 elephants have approached the puzzle box and 58 of them solved at least one door. Some solved problems quickly, while others hesitate or approach cautiously.
This individuality has profound implications for managing human-elephant conflicts. Building on these findings, Plotnik's team developed “targeted personality devices” to address human-elephant conflicts in a more personalized way. These devices use sensory deterrents — flashing lights, predator sounds, and scents like tiger or human odors — customized to individual elephants' behavioral traits to nudge elephants away from farms and back into the safety of their habitat.
“If an elephant is cognitively flexible, we need to take a more flexible approach to keeping them away from humans,” Plotnik shares.
The 60 Minutes piece features these novel techniques in action. Use the above player to watch footage of the elephants interacting with the puzzle box and devices.
By tailoring interventions to the distinct behaviors of each elephant, Plotnik’s work represents a shift from one-size-fits-all solutions to personalized conservation strategies. His goal is to create a harmonious balance where both humans and elephants can thrive. “You have an intelligent animal on both sides,” Plotnik emphasizes. “Conflict is inevitable until we come up with better solutions to promote coexistence.” Such work is critical to the survival of both species.
View the related TWCF-funded project.
Learn about TWCF's Diverse Intelligences Priority.
Related Blog Post:
The Thoughtful Giant: Elephant Cognition with Joshua Plotnik (podcast)
