Elephant cognition

Why study elephant cognition? degree Elephants have the largest absolute brain size of any land animal: 5.5 kg in Asian elephants and up to 6.5 kg in African savannah elephants. Larger brains should provide greater information processing power, but the high metabolic cost of brain tissue requires that animals only invest in large brains if they need to overcome some serious cognitive challenges. As a non-specialist browser, too large to be much threatened by predators, an elephant's biggest cognitive challenge is most likely to be social. All species of elephants form large social networks, with hierarchical, multi-level organisation, implying that elephants can deal with a degree of social complexity. Flexible problem solving would help, and elephants have the necessary brainpower. It is hardly surprising, then, that more and more researchers are becoming interested in the cognitive skills of these enigmatic animals.