Elephants are often seen comforting upset individual elephants with a gentle touch of their trunks reportedly. It's one thing to witness something that looks like comforting behavior, but another thing to prove that this is what elephants are doing. Now, scientists have shown that Asian elephants do indeed get upset when they see others in trouble, and they reach out to comfort them. Elephants, thus, join the list of other animals, including dogs, wolves and some birds, which have been shown to do so.
Elephants' responses to stress are difficult to explore because one has to wait for opportunities for these arising naturally in the wild. However, Joshua Plotnik, a scientist at Mahidol University in Thailand got around this problem. He compared Asian elephants' behaviors during times of stress to those during periods when little upsets them. For 1 to 2 weeks every month for nearly a year, Plotnik spent 30 to 180 minutes daily watching and recording the behavior of 26 Asian elephants living in Elephant Natural Park in northern Thailand.
Other researchers have previously shown that when upset, an elephant moves its ears and raises its tail; it may also make a low sound to show its stress. "When elephants in the park see an elephant behaving in this manner, they typically respond by feeling the same emotion," Plotnik said, "just as we do when watching a scary movie together. If an actor is frightened, our hearts race and we reach for each other's hands — a reaction known as ‘emotional contagion(情绪感染)'."
"But more studies are needed, preferably in wild populations," Plotnik said. "What is unclear is whether these responses primarily benefit the upset animals, or the responders," Shermin de Silva, a behavioral ecologist, said. However, the study "provides a very interesting first exploration into the behavior of elephants suffering from stress," said Graeme Shannon, a scientist at Colorado State University.