Asian elephants have different personality traits | Hacker News Reader

Asian elephants have different personality traits

phys.org

34 pointsdnetesn21 comments

Am I missing something or is this already known to anyone who has handled animals? I have dealt with dogs, cats, pigs, lizards and horses and they all had very distinguishable personalities.

I don’t think the novelty of the research is the fact that elephants have personalities, but instead the study of the personalities themselves and how they develop and are influenced by the environment and the species. If people stopped researching after determining that “yes, in fact, other animals have personalities too”, that would be pretty boring.

That makes sense. I think the article didn't make that clear enough.

Informed decisions require evidence-supported proof, if we're ever to move forward.

"Everybody already knows this" is perfectly applicable but ultimately useless. Common sense is a myth.

There is a difference between common myths and truths you have experienced directly, like the different personalities of animals you have dealt with.

And for the great majority of the knowledge you need to make decisions in your life, there either is no scientific proof, or learning it all it would take many lifetimes to learn.

Not only animals, but insects (ants in particular) are in question too: "Personality in social insects: How does worker personality determine colony personality?" http://www.actazool.org/downloadpdf.asp?filetype=pdf&id=1207...

Luckily, none of this stuff applies to humans, who are all completely the same.

You're not wrong, sometimes it feels like they're as aware and present as us, exactly as 'human', just with less ability to solve complex problems

It's surprising we haven't given them more rights yet, maybe this paper can pave the way toward legitimizing at least the larger animals as our sentient neighbours

The problem with giving animals rights is that ultimately they'd have to be able to communicate in court, and it's not clear that assigning them a proxy is sufficient to represent the animal. But if ever we find a way to communicate well enough for an animal to understand the concept of "court", or even just "tell us how you feel about this", then such an animal must be accorded rights commensurate with its ability to communicate and self-control.

(An animal that cannot keep from committing what to us are "crimes" can't be given all the rights that a human has. But supposing we figure out how to communicate such concepts to, say, orangutans, and they can handle them, then they must have rights equal to ours.)

Merely having personality and feelings cannot enough, otherwise we'd be obligated to eat no vertebrates -- I'd not be pleased to go that far!

This is an interesting comment and made me consider various scenarios and situations.

For one instance, 'Right to Live' would mean we can eat/use animal products anymore - but what about plants then? If you listen to the RadioLab episode Smart Plants, who knows what will be discovered about them in the future. And for most of humanity, most cultures have survived on animal consumption and animal products. Also, would these laws be enforceable on animals too? How would you feed predators and omnivores?

But what about instead of instead of specific rights like those afforded to people, we adopt more general 'kindness' rights to other living beings. For instance; the right of any animal to not being tortured, the right of kept animals to not be subjected to reasonable sized spaces(however that might be determined), the right of kept animals to medical treatment, the right of kept animals to the food it would be consuming in nature, ect.

Not sure how this would all be controlled and enforced(or even how this applies to current animal rights laws), but interesting to think about.

One might say that obligate carnivores (e.g., felines) get to eat other animals. Humans aren't quite obligate carnivores (though some of us might feel that we are :)...

We already do have animal cruelty laws -- we already forbid cruelty to animals.

And we forbid hunting of endangered species' individuals.

Some jurisdictions have laws about how much space domesticated animals must be accorded to live in.

So it's not like we accord animals no rights.

We have children who can't communicate in court but still have rights so that wouldn't necessarily stop an animal rights movement.

But I agree that giving rights to all animals would make our life much less convenient. We probably could make the lives of a lot of animals much better without too much effort though. For example, abandoning factory framing and reducing meat consumption would be very doable.

Yeah, but children (and non-communicative disabled adults) do not have quite the same rights as you or I. In fact, their rights are not too unlike those of, say, pets. Except that when children grow up, or the non-communicative issue is resolved in an adult, they become emancipated. Animals don't reach that stage, and it's not a stretch to say that it's about communication capabilities.

> It's surprising we haven't given them more rights yet

What would be the benefit of giving them rights?

What's the benefit of giving anyone rights?

Perhaps the rights are inherent, actually.

The benefit of giving rights to other people is that you avoid fighting them.

Inherent rights are not a concept with any application. Suppose you have an inherent right to take offense at my presence. So what?

Suppose you have an inherent right to the contents of my bank account. So what?

I think we are talking about the right not being hurt, tortured or killed, not about taking things from others.

That right is just as meaningless as any other right unless the people you don't want to hurt, torture, or kill you recognize it.

So, I am actually interested in how would you handle that?

For social animals at least (ie not a spider, but an elephant/dog/orangutan), in some sense they're similar to children in that they're 'people' but not with quite the mental capabilities of the rest of us. Except they have arguably better physical and self care capabilities, so they're actually easier to manage than children

What if we just gave them the ability to roam? Provide recognizable food and medical stations. Anecdotally, some of the dogs in Sri Lanka already do this (the locals feed them as they wander past), and even know to seek out vets if they're injured

For bad behavior they get jail/separation or correctional facilities just like the rest of us. This would have an evolutionary pressure

Population control would still be an issue, but easily resolved with surgeries and monitoring

I wonder how deeply a free animal could embed itself into our society (or at the edges without effecting us) if we had enough machine learning to clearly communicate it's simple but valid wants to the environment around it

I mean, so do cats?

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