---
title: "African elephant · Animals and other organisms · Entities · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities/elephant
description: "257 billion neurons, three times as many as a human, almost all in the cerebellum."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

[Entities](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities) › Animals and other organisms › Mammals

# African elephant

Loxodonta africana

257 billion neurons, three times as many as a human, almost all in the cerebellum.

Neurons

257 billion measured  · whole brain (\~98% in cerebellum) 

Herculano-Houzel S et al. (2014). The elephant brain in numbers. Front Neuroanat 8:46\. doi:10.3389/fnana.2014.00046.

In the cerebral cortex (or bird pallium)

5.6 billion

Herculano-Houzel et al. 2014.

## Evidence

* Asian elephants pass the mirror mark test.  
Plotnik JM, de Waal FBM, Reiss D (2006) Self-recognition in an Asian elephant. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103(45):17053-17057\. doi:10.1073/pnas.0608062103.

The [New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness](https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration) (2024) finds strong scientific support for conscious experience in mammals and birds.

Assess it against the published criteria