Animal-made art
Morris[2] and his associate Tyler Harris interpreted these canvas paintings as indications of an intrinsic motivation toward abstract creativity, as expressed through an exploration of the visual field and color.
Many of these painters progressed over time by expanding or contracting the area of paint coverage, the horizontal or vertical stroke relationships, and even the development of content.
[4][5][6] A more recent example is Pockets Warhol, a capuchin monkey from the Story Book Farm Primate sanctuary, who has been painting since 2011.
[16] Bini the Bunny (born 2012) is a Holland lop rabbit who paints abstract art on small canvases, holding a brush in his mouth.
[17] Pigcasso (2016–2024) was a South African pig who gained international notoriety for her abstract expressionist paintings, which have sold for thousands of dollars around the world.
[18] Pigcasso was rescued from an industrial hog farm as a piglet by her owner, Joanne Lefson, who taught her to paint using positive reinforcement techniques.
Lefson used the proceeds of the sales of Pigcasso's paintings to raise funds for her farm sanctuary in Franschhoek, South Africa.
Pigcasso and Lefson are the first non-human/human collaboration to have held an art exhibition together, which took place at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town in 2018.
[26] An elephant at West Midland Safari Park was reported to have taken a 'selfie' using a dropped mobile phone belonging to visitor Scott Brierley in May 2014.
[27] In 2015, an elephant in Koh Phangan, Thailand, took a running GoPro camera from traveller Christian Le Blanc and filmed some video footage.
[25] In 2023, after British YouTuber Tom Scott made a video featuring bears at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in Montana, the bears found a lost GoPro camera and accidentally turned it on, capturing two videos which were recovered by Scott when the camera was found.
[citation needed] The Ringling Bros circus featured an "Elephant brass band" which they claimed could "play popular songs of the day in tune and in time".
[32] In the 1950s, German evolutionary biologist Bernard Rensch found that elephants can distinguish 12 tones on the musical scale and remember simple melodies, even when played on different instruments at various pitches, timbres, and meters.
