There’s No ‘I’ in Elephant - Grade 8 English Language Arts - Comprehension Questions

Oct 3, 2026

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Grade 8 English Language Arts reading passage explains how elephants cooperate, using findings from researchers in the United States and Thailand. It describes comparative psychology, the challenge of studying elephant behavior safely, and a simple “pull-together” rope test. The text contrasts individual and paired pulling outcomes, then extends the idea with elephant waiting behavior to show understanding of when help is needed. Follow-up questions ask students to judge the author’s agreement, interpret how an at-home example reflects research, define “motivated,” and identify key details supporting the main idea.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages159

Reading Time6 h 41 min

AccessFree to download

Reading Passage

Key Ideas and Author’s Agreement

Interpreting the Pull-Together Example

Vocabulary in Context: “Motivated”

Supporting Details for the Main Idea

8th Grade English Language Arts There’s No ‘I’ in Elephant By Stephen Ornes Elephants are social animals. They live with their families, give hugs and call each other by using their trunks as trumpets. They also might know how to help each other. In a recent elephant study by researchers from the United States and Thailand, pairs of giant animals learned to work together to get some ears of corn. Other animals, especially some primates, are already known to work together to complete tasks, but now elephants have joined the club. Perhaps the finding is not too surprising: scientists suspect that elephants, with their big brains and survival savvy, may be among the smartest animals on the planet. Joshua Plotnik, who worked on the study, told Science News that the animals didn’t just learn a trick. Instead, the ways the elephants behaved show that they understand how working together brings benefits to everyone involved. Plotnik is a comparative psychologist now at the University of Cambridge in England. Psychology is the study of behaviors and mental processes, and comparative psychologists study how animals other than humans behave. It’s not easy to study these formidable mammals’ behavior. Elephants are the largest mammals that walk on solid ground, and if they don't like a particular experiment, look out! Scientists have to be careful to keep their distance. To figure out whether elephants can cooperate, Plotnik and Frans de Waal, a comparative psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta, built a test. The test was based on one that’s been used to study the behavior of primates for more than 70 years. Primates include animals such as chimpanzees and monkeys. (Humans are also primates but these experiments didn't focus on humans.) The test is so simple to set up, you could build one yourself. You need a long piece of string, a book and a friend. First, sit next to your friend. Second, place the book in front of both of you. Third, lay down the string so that it starts in front of you, wraps around the back of the book, and then ends up in front of your friend. The string should form a u-shape, with the book inside. Now for the experiment: pull on the string by yourself, and you’ll notice that it slides toward you without moving the book. If your friend pulls on the other end of the string without your help, the string slides in the other direction—but the book still doesn’t move. If both of you pull on the ends of the string at the same time, though, the book slides toward you. In other words, you and your friend must cooperate to get the book. In the case of elephants, they weren’t motivated to get a book. Instead, they were trying to get to some delicious corn sitting on a platform. The rope ran around the platform. Animals received corn treats only if both pulled the rope ends at the same time with their trunks. This cooperation brought the platform close enough for them to reach the corn with their trunks. The scientists studied six elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, Thailand. The elephants figured out how to get the corn, but Plotnik and his colleagues wanted to know if the animals had simply learned a trick, or if they understood some basic ideas about cooperation. So the researchers did more experiments. In one, a single elephant was led to the rope and stood, alone, waiting. The animal waited patiently for more than 25 seconds for another elephant to come along—the animals seemed to know that sometimes, you have to wait for help to get the job done. Sometimes an elephant waited as long as 45 seconds.“That’s a long time for an animal waiting for food,” Plotnik told Science News. So far, only elephants and primates have successfully cooperated to master this kind of pull-together test. But that doesn’t necessarily mean other animals don’t cooperate. Plotnik says many behaviorsin the animal kingdom may be explained by cooperation, but perhaps human scientists don’t und

FAQs

What evidence does the passage use to show elephants can cooperate?

The passage describes a pull-together rope test where the book (or platform goal) moves only when both partners pull at the same time. It also includes experiments where an elephant waits for another to come to help.

How does the “book and string” example help readers understand the scientists’ research?

It models the same cooperation pattern: pulling alone doesn’t achieve the goal, but coordinating pulls produces the intended result. This helps readers grasp how researchers tested cooperation.

What does the author’s main idea emphasize about cooperation?

The author argues that elephants understand that cooperation brings benefits to everyone involved. The passage supports this through both the coordinated pulling and the waiting behavior experiments.

Oct 3, 2026

Upload by McQueen