Lucy A . Bates , 1 Phyllis C

Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and ‘babysitting’ calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. Empathy is defined as the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation (Cambridge English Dictionary), often referred to as ‘putting oneself into another’s shoes’. Empathy is a component of human consciousness (Thompson, 2001), and the ability to detect and respond appropriately to the emotions of others is a cornerstone of normal social function. The recent discovery of a mirror system for emotional Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 10–11, 2008, pp. 204–25 Correspondence: 1 School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, UK. 2 Amboseli Trust for Elephants, PO Box 15135, Langata 00509, Nairobi, Kenya. 3 Department of Psychology, Stirling University, Stirling, UK. 4 Corresponding author: Email: [email protected] responses in humans has provided evidence for the neurological basis of empathy (Jabbi, Swart and Keysers, 2007; Wicker et al., 2003), but little is known about the evolution of this emotional mirror system and to what degree it is shared by any other species. Macaque monkeys are known to possess mirror neurons that react to the physical actions of others when they match actions in the monkey’s own repertoire (Gallese et al., 1996; Rizzolatti et al., 1996), but the analogous emotional mirror system has not yet been identified in non-human animals. It is important, however, for all animals to be able to detect and respond to the content and context of conspecifics’ emotional displays. Inappropriate responses to another’s aggressive displays, fear reactions or sexual advances would be maladaptive and potentially fatal; that animals respond appropriately in these circumstances suggests they have at least a rudimentary form of emotion recognition system. But human abilities go beyond simply reading and responding to an emotional display in the present: we can also model emotional states and desired goals that influence others’ behaviour in the past and future, and use this to plan our own actions. Do any animals share these advanced abilities, and if so can they be understood as the result of empathic responses to other individuals? Simple forms of empathy, such as emotional contagion, have been used to explain contagious yawning, scratching, and the behavioural copying shown in the play and aggression of chimpanzees and Japanese macaques (Anderson, Myowa-Yamakoshi and Matsuzawa, 2004; de Waal, 2008; Parr, Waller and Fugate, 2005). Parr et al. argue that ‘this type of emotional awareness functions to coordinate activity among group members, facilitate social cohesion and motivate conciliatory tendencies, and is likely to play a key role in coordinating social behaviours in large-brained social primates’. However, behavioural contagion is also evident in chickens, and all these phenomena can be explained with simple models of response facilitation (Byrne, 1994; Hoppitt, Blackburn and Laland, 2007). Nevertheless, there is evidence that even a behaviour as seemingly simple as contagious yawning does relate to empathic understanding in humans, so behavioural contagion may well be a precursor to, or simplified form of, sophisticated empathic abilities (Lehmann, 1979). Chimpanzees have been suggested to show higher levels of empathy, such as in the behaviour described as ‘consolation’ whereby an uninvolved bystander reassures one of the individuals involved in an agonistic interaction (de Waal and Aureli, 1996). It seems most appropriate to look for evidence of empathy in species that live in coherent, coordinated social groups, where DO ELEPHANTS SHOW EMPATHY? 205