Do Elephants Forget Their Car Keys?
Think back to your earliest memory. Was it your first day of
school? Your fourth birthday party? Your first trip to the dentist?
Or maybe you have no idea what your earliest memory is,
being extremely forgetful (like me). For
example, I forget what the wifi password is or where I put my car keys in the
morning!
While forgetfulness is simply a nuisance to humans, after all, it
only takes a few minutes to retrace my steps and find whatever it is that I
misplaced ,
it could mean life or death for elephants.
Elephants live in herds and graze several square miles every
day. In the process, they can sometime get lost in the wilderness. The entire
herd could perish if the matriarch (the female leader
of the herd) is unable to find a water source in time.
Elephants hold the world record for the largest brain for a
land animal. The elephant brain is denser, has more folds than a human brain
and includes a large limbic system.
Now you may be asking yourself, "what on earth is a
limbic system?"
The limbic system is a subsystem inside the medial temporal
lobe of the brain with the essential task of storing information.
So basically, the limbic system is the body's hard drive. And
as with any good hard drive, the larger, the better.
With the world's largest (terrestrial) "hard
drive", elephants can accomplish amazing feats, such as remembering other
elephants and pinpointing water sources (without a GPS) from over 20 years ago.
You guys can go on marveling at the mental prowess of the
elephant. I have to try and remember where I left my phone.
Reference:
Very interesting. But is this survival instinct or memory? like whales swim 2000 miles, whether or not the mom is alive.
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