Studies show elephants can distinguish between different quantities and choose the larger amount. They can perform basic addition tasks by selecting containers with more items. This ability helps them assess food availability and group size. Numerical understanding is rare among animals and usually limited to survival contexts. Elephants demonstrate it consistently and accurately.
This matters because numerical cognition reflects advanced brain function. It places elephants among the most intelligent non-human animals.
It also explains their strategic behavior around food competition. Elephants don’t just eat—they calculate.
In experiments, elephants made correct quantity choices even when visual cues were removed. This suggests genuine numerical reasoning, not guesswork.
University of Cambridge (cam.ac.uk)