Below is an NYT (10-15-13) article titled "Elephants Get the Point of Pointing." a) Smet conducted her experiment with 11 elephants over a two-month period. Assuming that the experiment was conducted on each of 60 days. In total how many trials of her experiment were conducted-that is, what is N? b) If elephants have no ability to interpret pointing, what is their expected success rate at picking the bucket with food? If elephants had the ability to interpret pointing, would their success rate be larger or smaller than this value? c) Your answers to part b form the basis for specifying the Null and Alternative hypotheses for a test of whether elephants get the point of pointing. Conduct the test for a=.01 test d) What is the p-value of your test? Elephants Get the Point of Pointin, A family of elephants at the Ambesell NationN Park in ready keenly aware of each other. In fact, For two months, Ma. Smet tested 11 elle- POINT To things without giving much Kenya. New research, with just that pre existing capacity may have made phants. When she crunched the data of- ight to what a sophisticated act it real- 11 elephants, suggests that they those wild species oary to domesticate. terward, she found that the elephants. . By simply extending a finger, we can In the mid-20109, Dr. Byrne began to picked the right bucket 67.5 percent of the other people know we want to draw understand harian painting. r Attention to an object, and indicate a rare ability among animals wonder if elephants could pass the point- time. (One-year-old human babies do a Et- :h object it is. ing test, too He got the idea while be and a le better at these tests, scoring 127 per- graduate student we cent.) s sophisticated as pointing may be, conducting an ex Elephants may have a ever, babies usually learn to do it by periment on wild elephants in Kenya. They Ma. Smet found that the elephants could first birthday. "If you don't get that deep social intelligence found that elephants could distinguish the follow her pointing whether she stuck out "re drawing your attention to an ob- that rivals humans' smells of people from hidden pieces of her whole arm or just used her hand. And they'll get cross," said Richard W. in some ways. clothing. Sometimes, Dr. Byrne noticed, when she simply stood between the buck ne, a biologist at the University of St the elephants would curl up their trunks, ets, by contrast, the elephants stuck their aiming them at the source of the smell trunks in the buckets at random. 'hen scientists test other species, they "Maybe they were pointing," Dr. Byrne Ms, Smet and Dr. Byrne published their that pointing is a rare gift in the ani- said. "But we don't know that. They could results Thursday in the journal Current Bi- kingdom. Even our closest relatives, be just sniffing the bronze," ology chimpanzees, don't seem to get the The logical way to start exploring this The scientists were able to rule out the it of pointing possibility would be to give elephants the possibility that the elephants learned to an ut Dr. Byrne and his graduate student pointing test. But these giant mammals soclate pointing with food over the course a 5met now say they have discovered are a lot more challenging to work with of the experiments. "They were just as animals that also appear to under- than a poodle. In fact, it wasn't until last good on Trial 1" said Dr. Byrne. id pointing: elephants. The study, In- year that one of Dr. Byrne's students, ME. Other researchers were intrigued but ing just 11 elephants, is hardly the last Smet, was able to run the test cautious about drawing conclusions from d on the subject. But it raises a provoc- Ma. Smnet traveled to Zimbabwe, where a the study. Diana Reiss, an expert on ele- e possibility that elephants have a deep company called Wild Horizons offers ele- phant cognition at Hunter College, won- ad intelligence that rivals humans' in phant-back salaris. Each morning, while dered if the elephants had already learned the elephants were waiting to take tourists about pointing by observing their handlers gooarchers use a simple but powerful on a trip, Ma. Smet would set up two buck- pointing to each other. to see if animals understand pointing. ets behind a screen. "In these elephant camps such opportun y put food in one of two identical con- An elephant handler would bring one of nition can easily go unnoticed by their bus ers and then sently point at the one the animals a few yards away from her. man caretakers," said Dr. Reiss. food in it Then they walt to see which The elephant watched Ms. Smet lower Dr. Byrne and Me. Smet plan to address al approaches. pieces of fruit behind the screen and put this question and Investigate whether wild hile primates and most other animals them fato one of the buckets'But the clo- elephants can point to each other. have been studied fail the test, a few phant couldn't see which bucket she put "It makes us want to revisit visual sig- " done well. Most of them are dames- the fruit in nals by elephants for elephants," said Ma. ted mammals, with dogs proving to be "I actually chocked that from clophant Smet. . silly good at understanding pointing. height," Ma. Smet sakd. Dr. Byrne is also curious to know wheth here results have prompted some re Ma. Smet then brought the buckety out er any other highly social wild mammals rcheers to speculate that during domes- from behind the screen and stood between can also pass the pointing fest. Whales and tion, animals evolve to become keenly them. She pointed at the one with the fruit dolphins would be at the top of his list, but ire of humans, Others have made a dil- inside, and the handler walked the ele- he isn't holding his breath for those experi- ant argument: they propose that the phant toward the buckets. Ms. Smet noted ments to be published: "They make ele- ancestors of species like dogs were al- which bucket it stuck it's trunk in first phfonts look easy to work with" he said