Reflection

Overall, I learned much more about elephant's altruism through specific examples. Within my paper, which is linked below, I talked about an elephant named Eragrostis and her daughter, Themeda, who both absolutely fascinated me. I felt like I was able to almost get to know certain elephants like Eragrostis and Themeda along with other elephants, too, such as Tolstoy who was in the docuseries I watched. Additionally, while I already knew a lot about emotional intelligence and psychology, it was interesting to see how different emotional intelligence theories were compiled together by researchers Drigas and Papoutsi. I loved learning about the legal rights of animals and habeas corpus throughout this process, as well. 

In my presentation and oral defense, I learned that I have to specify the content I talked about. Since I had learned so much about elephants and my project, so much of the information was ingrained in me and seemed like common sense. I quickly realized other people didn't know that information because they didn't have the knowledge I accumulated throughout the course of my project. I also had to focus on presenting my information in a neutral and unbiased way because I wanted to make sure the content of my presentation was prominent rather than my personal ideas within legal cases.

This project and class taught me the importance of self motivation and loving the work you do. I absolutely loved my project and am passionate about it, so it was easy for me to invest a lot into it. However, this wasn't the case for everyone and people around me deeply struggled because they weren't passionate about the work they were doing. This taught me that in life, it's important to do work and commit to what I truly enjoy because it makes my work easier and more meaningful. As a researcher, I learned that I could improve on organization throughout the research process. When I was working on my paper and presentation, I put my citations and annotated bibliography pieces on multiple different google docs which made it difficult to compile all of them. The independent nature of this class will help me in college where I manage my work independently much like I did in this class.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jacqui Coffee, a former Rock Canyon student, for helping me throughout this process and for putting me in contact with Maura Davis from the Denver Zoo. Jacqui helped me get in contact with people who knew more about elephants than her and I did, which I deeply appreciated. 

Paper Abstract

The legal status of animals is not a global continuity, especially when it is under judicial review. Two examples of this include Happy, the elephant, and Sandra, the orangutan, where the former is considered to be property due to the strict interpretation of habeas corpus and the latter is considered to be a nonhuman person due to flexible interpretation of habeas corpus. Despite the lack of a general consensus on what rights these animals can hold, the majority of evidence used in these cases is anecdotal and does not contextualize emotional intelligence on a full spectrum or in a scientifically grounded way. This research explores how an emotional intelligence criteria can be made and adapted for animals, but more specifically elephants, to provide a more rigorous basis for arguments regarding the complexity of animals and their legal status. Using an emotional intelligence pyramid from researchers A. Drigas and C. Papoutsi, this study used an observational study to analyze elephants’ emotional intelligence. Data was collected from the documentary Secrets of the Elephants from National Geographic and was only collected if it was commented on by researchers in the film. Using a chi-square test, this study concludes that elephants can exhibit emotional intelligence levels 5 and 6 of the pyramid. This study suggests that the reason emotional intelligence in elephants is not recognized in legal contexts could be due to a process called de-mentalizing. The study argues that the legal status of elephants should not exclude them from holding the right of habeas corpus.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, sentience, habeas corpus, de-mentalizing

Links

Link to my paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-wJ4HV5xTFccTqOW6jr1pdRXDTNIDOszcBqF1nD6GAw/edit?usp=sharing

Link to my final presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FtLIKVlOu4X5VhqYu6jCPtZPATTpbnuE/view?usp=sharing

Next Steps

I am committed to CU Boulder and will be attending in the fall of 2026. I plan to double major in neuroscience and ecology & evolutionary biology and continue to do work related to animals. I'm excited to continue my academic journey and grow as a person and student. I am in the honor's program at CU, which is heavily oriented around research, so I plan to continue working heavily in the realm of animals as I pursue new research projects.