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Anonymous
Can elephants really paint images from their own head, or are they trained to paint certain patterns? I know this video is old, and even my seeing it is old, but I thought I'd ask you guys at /an/. My 3D art/photography teacher from this year sent this to us all in an email and said she actually cried from the beauty of it; were her tears in vain? She also has a strange liking for this obnoxious hipster jag-off that nobody in the class cares for and is obsessed with her iPhone.
>> Anonymous
it's a fake video, your "teacher" was blinded by her stupidity. kick her in the croch and enrole in a real class.
>> Anonymous
>>273610

She's really quite good at teaching, she just... I dunno, she knows art like crazy but she and her husband both are a little non-religiously spiritual and I guess they get a little sensitive about silly things, and she tends to like obnoxious students but she has a liking for the better ones as well.

Anyway, she's moving to Vermont now (we're in the South) so I'll never see her again

I got suspicious when I saw this video on YouTube and a lot of commentors were shitting all over it saying, "They train them to paint the same picture over and over again, it's not creativity at all!" Which that doesn't bother me as much as the people who say, "That's so cruel!" because getting any animal to do anything regardless of how non-harmful it is will be deemed cruel by any lot of hooting dickheads. But hey, that's YouTube comments for ya.
>> Anonymous
OH SHIT! Haha, I forgot to post the link in the first place! I don't know how I got it, the email I found it in should have been long-since deleted. Of course, now it IS gone and I can't get it back and I've since closed that tab. Oh well, look it up.
>> Anonymous
>>273610
No, not a fake video. Elephants can really be taught to paint pictures of flowers or even line drawings of elephants. It's quite possible they haven't the slightest clue what the drawing is supposed to be (not even all human cultures can "read" line drawings) but are only copying the actions taught to them.
>> Mr. Bubbles !!DLJ3bQ7yunJ
>>273603
It would be easier to tell if they drew real things more often. The abstract shit elephants like could be deep insights to the elephant mind, or just random shapes.
>> Anonymous
>>273672
Elephants have realized, like some humans, that people will fork out shitloads of money for "abstract" art.
>> Anonymous
watch the video again, and notice the elephant's draw steps are stroke based, not curve based, meaning the elephant is not sampling 3D shapes (even from memory), but rather replicating another line drawing it's seen before, which elephants can be trained to do quite well

meanwhile, to interpret the end product requires a high level abstraction of 3D shapes, so we can safely say the elephant is imitating a product rather than creating on its own
>> Anonymous
>>274050
Buh?
>> Anonymous
>>273613
You are a constant reminder to people like me that half of the population is dumber than the average dumb person you meet in a day.
>> Anonymous
>>274238
In a nutshell... to be able to draw something, you need a few abilities:
1. Ability to relay information and coordinate that information with whatever limb or body part you're going to draw with.
2. Ability to be self-aware and understand that you are drawing... as you are drawing (which allows you to control said drawing).

Elephants do not. Tell your teacher she's a fuckin' douche.
>> Anonymous
>>274260

Both of your assumptions are incorrect - do a little research into animal cognitory science.
>> A.r. !!1J3JRobqN2a
I dunno if this has much to do with the OP, but it was proven recently that elephants do recognize themselves in a mirror. Which puts them in a group shared only by primates and dolphins IIRC.