Elephants and Dogs

If you’re unsure about whether an act upon an animal is cruel or abusive, simply substitute your beloved dog or cat for the animal being acted upon. It makes things clear in a hurry. Violently removing a puppy of kitten from its mother to condemn it to live its life in a cage is unthinkable. It’s abhorrent. We don’t do that. Yet to do the same to a baby elephant is both thinkable and a common practice in the U.S. and elsewhere.

As between the two, it can be argued that elephants cognitively and emotionally are more poorly suited to a life in a cage in a zoo that dogs.

Elephants outperform dogs in several cognitive and emotional benchmarks.

In addition to self-recognition, an ability dogs lack, 4 elephants understand their physical presence as obstacles in tasks, which is linked to abstract thinking. 24 For problem solving, elephants use tools (e.g., blocks as stepping stools) and cooperate to solve complex tasks, such as pulling ropes simultaneously for food rewards. 25. Dogs solve simpler problems, like opening doors, but rely more on associative learning/training. 5

Elephants possess highly sophisticated spatial memory, allowing them to remember and navigate complex migration routes over hundreds of miles, often across what to humans see as featureless landscapes. 17. They also recall water sources, and individual faces for decades. That they mourn deceased herd members indicates long-term emotional memory. 26.

Elephants display altruism and grief; dogs show loyalty but less complex emotional reciprocity. 49. Dogs excel in associative memory (e.g., commands, routines) but lack the spatial and social recall seen in elephants. 5

In terms of social intelligence, elephants live in matriarchal herds with complex communication (vocalizations, low-frequency rumbles, body language). As discussed, they show empathy, aid injured members, and grieve deaths. 49 Dogs are highly responsive to training, having adapted to read human gestures and emotions. 45.

Elephants use low-frequency rumbles, trumpets, and physical gestures to communicate. Dogs specialize in interpreting human cues (e.g., tone, gestures) and learning commands. 5

Elephants have larger brains with a highly complex neocortex and spindle neurons linked to advanced cognition. 5 Dogs have smaller brains optimized for sensory processing and quick associative learning. 5. Elephants are widely regarded as one of the most intelligent non-human animals, displaying behaviors associated with grief, learning, mimicry, play, altruism, tool use, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and complex communication. 1

In direct comparison, elephants are generally smarter than human babies under two years old in several cognitive domains, including self-awareness, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. 156 As human children grow, their intelligence, of course, eventually surpasses that of elephants, but during infancy, elephants demonstrate more advanced mental abilities.