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A study by researchers from the University St Andrews has found that elephants are the only wild animals that can understand human pointing without being trained.

In the study, published in Current Biology, the researchers show that a group of 11 captive Zimbabwean elephants, which were used to following vocal instructions but weren’t trained to respond to pointing, could find hidden food by interpreting where humans were pointing.

According to the study: “elephants successfully interpreted pointing when the experimenter’s proximity to the hiding place was varied and when the ostensive pointing gesture was visually subtle, suggesting that they understood the experimenter’s communicative intent.”