Elephant polo Elephant polo Elephant polo is a variant of polo played while riding elephants. It is played in Nepal, Rajasthan (India), and Thailand. England and Scotland regularly field teams. Equipment consists of a standard polo ball and six to ten foot cane (similar to bamboo) sticks with a polo mallet head on the end. The pitch is three-quarters of the length of a standard polo pitch, due to the lower speed of the elephants. Two people ride each elephant; the elephants are steered by mahouts, while the player tells the mahout which way to go and hits the ball. Elephant polo
Elephant cognition Elephant cognition Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. With a mass of just over 5 kg (11 lb), an elephant's brain has more mass than that of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twenty times those of a typical elephant, a whale's brain is barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. In addition, elephants have a total of 300 billion neurons. Elephant brains are similar to humans' in terms of general connectivity and areas. The elephant cortex has as many neurons as a human brain,