Elephant psychology: What we know and what we would like to know

Although elephants are well-known and one of the most popular species among people, their behavior and cognitive abilities have not been studied very extensively. But recently, more and more researchers are becoming interested in studying their cognition, particularly their general intelligence, including causal reasoning and mirror self recognition, memory, and numerical cognition. Although genetically elephants are more closely related to the small-brained aardvarks and manatees than to primates, they hold enormous potential in their cognitive skills. Also, studying their cognition is important from the point of view of animal welfare in captivity.