Elephants Can Len A Helping Trunk Rhetorical Analysis

In the passages, “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk” and “Elephants Know When They Need a Helping Trunk in a Cooperative Task”, and the video “Elephants Show Cooperation”, each present different types of information. The details shown in each medium all pertain to an experiment done with elephants to show how they use teamwork to retrieve a treat. Each use different ways of explaining the same thing. In “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk”, the information provided describes the skills and advancements of elephants in the experiment. For example, when Karen McComb, a behavioral ecologists at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom says, “These are clever experiments.” she is describing the strategies the elephants use. The elephants were taught to pull the ropes at the same time to bring forth the tables, each containing a treat for each elephant. However if they did not use teamwork and/ or did not wait for the other elephant, the treat table was pulled back out of reach and the elephants would not receive the treat. The article compares the elephant experiment to a previous experiment with chimpanzees. The Chimpanzee experiment was first administered in the 1930’s, and required to animals to work together to earn a treat. If they don’t cooperate, neither factor gets a reward.

Contrary to the other articles, “Elephants Show Cooperation”, describes indistinguishable information in a perceivable way. The information presented shows the tactics visually, instead of in text like “Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk” Scientists believe that elephants are among the most cognitively advanced animals, says Discovery News. Some of the strategies the elephants used included pulling with their trunks, or using their feet and legs for