My colleague sent a couple of us this link just before lunch: Pictures of the day: 4 July 2008. The first picture kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen elephants painting pictures. I mean, newscasts often include such things in weekend broadcasts as padding or something light-hearted. So, being that it’s stuff I’d seen before, I wasn’t all that impressed. It wasn’t until I realized that the picture was elephant-like that I was amazed. Of course, being that it’s a static image we weren’t entirely sure if it was real. Someone else commented that the elephant could just be some guy with a big elephant arm puppet. True.

At that point, someone took the liberty of looking up related videos on YouTube. Check this out:

Now that is pretty cool. I’m not sure whether he or she actually gets the fact that what’s being drawn is representative of an elephant. Or perhaps, as a commenter suggested, the elephant is just trained to trace a shape. No matter what the case, it’s still awesome to watch. I mean, it would take the elephant a great deal of muscle control just to do the proper strokes.