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Mama elephants may not spend the twenty-two months they carry their offspring with headphones blasting Beethoven on their bellies, but a recent study shows they measure up to their master mammals in one sense.

It turns out, elephants are one of the only other animals that understand what pointing means without being taught, just like human babies, a rare thing in the animal kingdom.

“If [the elephants] have learned to follow pointing from their past experiences, it’s mystery when and how,” said [St. Andrew University’s Richard] Byrne, about the experiment. “Rather, it seems they do it naturally.”

Since elephants and humans are only very distantly related it’s assumed this ability evolved independently in each species and could be a function of elephants’ close-knit social network where their trunks could be used to point out objects.

Score one for the big guys, but we’re betting there are more than a few zookeepers wondering if anyone has testing whether or not they can be potty-trained, too.

Full story at Wired via Geekosystem.

Animals smarts.

Photo credit: Fotolia