getting into a vast elephant omnibus.

And would they have ever tried airships?

The elephant is stupid when it comes to learning how to use tools.
So are all other species except our own. Isn't it strange? A
tool, in the most primitive sense, is any object, lying around,
that can obviously be used as an instrument for this or that
purpose. Many creatures use objects as /materials/, as birds use
twigs for nests. But the step that no animal takes is learning
freely to use things as instruments. When an elephant plucks off
a branch and swishes his flanks, and thus keeps away insects, he
is using a tool. But he does it only by a vague and haphazard
association of ideas. If he once became a conscious user of tools
he would of course go much further.

We ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in
beginning. Think of the long epochs that passed before it entered
our heads.

And all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on,
without any species making use of this obvious aid. The lesson
to be learned was simple: the reward was the rule of a planet.
Yet only one species, our own, has ever had that much brains.

It makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still
be unlearned.


It is not necessarily stupid however, to fail to use tools. To