Artistic Elephants Cafe

Utrecht, Netherlands
via Architecture & Tradition (@archi_tradition)

Barroom brawl.

Young Republican In Training.

Seals store a lot of flubber.

Cat wants to help with the Ikea building.

Now pandas are getting out of control, too!

Adopting a feral dog found in the wilderness of the mountains of Montenegro.

Rabbit can't believe you grew all of these crops just for him!

Some stunts make you wonder: "Why?" "Why are you doing this, exactly? Who's this for?" I guess he's a big Indiana Jones fan and wants to prove that Indy's trick of jumping out of a plane on a liferaft and surviving is plausible (if were he also wearing a parachute).

This poor lizard. He's too shy to compete for delicious ants.

The mutual admiration society between this lab and his garbagemen is strong.

Nobody dresses to fly anymore.

I previously linked a video of a dog who spins wildly in some kind of ninja frenzy. Here, he shows off his Spinning Ninjitsu techniques against an enemy, who is equally fearful and confuzzled.

Neighborhood watch.

Wind advisory. Stay with it until the end.

This is a very poignant story: A poor elephant was bullied and ostracized by other elephants in a zoo enclosure.

Because the other elephants were jealous of the attention he was getting.

Because he's a painter.

I did not post this for a while because it seemed... what's the word? Total horseshit.

But it's... real?!

Like several other species that are able to produce abstract art, elephants, using their trunks to hold brushes, create paintings which some have compared to the work of abstract expressionists.[50] Elephant art is now commonly featured at zoos, and is shown in museums and galleries around the world.[51] Ruby at the Phoenix Zoo is considered the original elephant art star,[52] and her paintings have sold for as much as $25,000.[50] Ruby chose her own colors and was said to have a keen sense of which color she wished to use.[52] The Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project, an "elephant art academy" in New York, teaches elephants retired from the logging industry to paint.[53] For paintings that resemble identifiable objects, teachers give the elephants guidance.[50] An example of this was shown in the TV program Extraordinary Animals, in which elephants at a camp in Thailand were able to draw portraits with flowers. Although the images were drawn by the elephants, there was always a trainer assisting and guiding the movement.[54]

A popular video showing an elephant painting a picture of another elephant became widespread on Internet news and video websites.[55] The website Snopes.com, which specializes in debunking urban legends, lists the video as "partly true", in that the elephant produced the brush strokes, but notes that the similarity of the produced paintings is indicative of a learned sequence of strokes rather than a creative effort on the part of the elephant.[54]

Well... may be. But humans learn to be artists by repetition and copying, too.

It's too cute, make it stop!

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:40 PM

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