Humans have long been fascinated by elephants, the largest land animal in the modern world. Social animals that live in herds, elephants are native to both Africa and Asia. Their large ears, long trunk, and long life span have made elephants one of the most captivating creatures on Earth. Our long-standing interest in elephants has led to several beliefs about surprising elephant behaviors.
Elephants Are Aware of Approaching Death
One of the popular beliefs is that when elephants become old and weak, they know that they are nearing the end of their lives. They demonstrate this by breaking away from their herds and going off alone to certain locations often found near bodies of water—so called “elephant graveyards”—to die alone. The idea that old elephants seem aware that they will die soon is supported by the discovery of many sites containing bones exclusively of elderly elephants.
Representing Objects through Art
Additionally, elephants seem to have artistic ability. Elephants can be taught to hold a paintbrush in their trunk and use it to paint on a canvas. Some elephants have been known to paint drawings that represent recognizable things: flowers, other elephants, even themselves. This talent makes elephants the only animal other than humans to produce art representing the world around them.
Fear of Mice
Finally, it has long been believed that elephants have a fear of mice. In 77 C.E., the Roman philosopher and scientist Pliny the Elder wrote that elephants are more afraid of mice, small mammals that can do elephants no harm, than of the much more dangerous animals with which elephants normally share an environment, such as lions or tigers. In a recent scientific experiment in which a herd of elephants was confronted with several mice, the elephants backed away from the mice and left the area to avoid them.
Based on the given materials, the article as well as the lecturer discusses elephants. The author states some fascinating beliefs about elephants. The lecturer provides several reasons to prove they are just misunderstandings.
Initially, it is alleged in the reading that elephants sense they are approaching death since they depart from the herds when they become old. The supporting evidence for this is elephant graveyards found near water. However, the lecturer asserts that there is a practical reason for this behavior. As elephants gets old their teeth worn out so they look for softer vegetation to eat which is usually found adjacent to water. So animal stays there until its death to eat not because it knows the time of death.
Second, the writer proclaims that elephants have artistic abilities since they know how to hold the brush with their trunk and some times the draw meaningful objects like a flower or themselves. Yet again, the speaker underscores that elephants have sensitive ears and some people train them using this feature. Trainers teach them draw lines by striking their ears and elephants remember these lines. When a trainer encourage it to draw again by touching the animal's ear, the elephant just perform the task not knowing what it is drawing.
The last point of contention between the listening and the reading passages is their fear of mice. The author states that while elephants do not fear of bigger animals like lions, they avoid mice. On the other hand, they are not afraid of mice themselves but it is a natural instinct to avoid an unfamiliar animal. She alludes to the fact that when an elephant lives in a zoo where there are a lot of mice they do not react to them but in nature where they do not see mice they do not know what they are facing. As they understand that mice do no harm to them, the elephant do not mind them.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-12 | sandeshbhandari2 | 70 | view |
| 2020-01-12 | sandeshbhandari2 | 70 | view |
| 2020-01-12 | sandeshbhandari2 | 70 | view |
| 2019-12-23 | wacklol | 71 | view |
| 2019-12-23 | wacklol | 78 | view |
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 461, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'animals'' or 'animal's'?
Suggestion: animals'; animal's
...ourage it to draw again by touching the animals ear, the elephant just perform the task...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, look, second, so, well, while, as well as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 10.4613686534 115% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 0.0 5.04856512141 0% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 7.30242825607 110% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 12.0772626932 108% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 22.412803532 187% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 34.0 30.3222958057 112% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 5.01324503311 60% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1563.0 1373.03311258 114% => OK
No of words: 325.0 270.72406181 120% => OK
Chars per words: 4.80923076923 5.08290768461 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.24591054749 4.04702891845 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.4572077288 2.5805825403 95% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 145.348785872 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.541538461538 0.540411800872 100% => OK
syllable_count: 475.2 419.366225166 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.23620309051 134% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 1.25165562914 240% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 13.0662251656 130% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 21.2450331126 89% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.5532481274 49.2860985944 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.9411764706 110.228320801 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1176470588 21.698381199 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.35294117647 7.06452816374 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 4.33554083885 161% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 4.45695364238 112% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.132249060364 0.272083759551 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0473618232561 0.0996497079465 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0312624597008 0.0662205650399 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0803690747077 0.162205337803 50% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0389505850492 0.0443174109184 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.8 13.3589403974 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 53.8541721854 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 11.0289183223 86% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.62 12.2367328918 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.42419426049 92% => OK
difficult_words: 66.0 63.6247240618 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 10.498013245 91% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 20 minutes.
Rates: 83.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 25.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.