Elephants have fascinated experts for a long time with their advanced traits like mourning their dead, helping sick or injured herd members, and recognising themselves in mirrors.
Now researchers think these are signs of self-domestication but the theory of self-domestication is hard to test. Max Planck Institute evolutionary biologist Limor Raviv said that besides humans, one other species that has been argued to be self-domesticated is bonobos. It is a process of "selection against aggression" that is self-induced and not forced.
A new study suggests that the advanced trait of elephants is due to self-domestication.
Author of the study Raviv and team members identified the same physical features and display of the same habits in humans, bonobos, and elephants. Some of the common measures are being social, having a long childhood, and babysitting the offspring of other members of the herd. Researchers also noted that African elephants have a shortened jawbone and appear to be able to restrain themselves from being aggressive to others.
Elephants also learn from each other about what to eat and how to raise babies. These are socially transmitted knowledge as opposed to spiders being born with the knowledge of spinning silk and birds building nests. The gentle giants of the jungle also have sophisticated communication systems.
When the team analysed the genes of elephants and compared them with the genome of 261 other domesticated mammals, they found several candidate genes linked to domestication. This hints at the possibility that domestication can evolve in multiple branches of the mammal evolutionary tree.
Scientists are also linking it to their large size and strength. Since elephants are less worried about evading or fighting other animals for survival, they get a safe environment that allows them to relax selective pressures for aggression. This also frees cognitive resources and creates more opportunities to explore, communicate, and play.
Some in the scientific community are sceptical about the theory and argue that such a development needs a domesticator.