Dogs and elephants have a very interesting trait in common—they're the only two animals that understand human gestures!

Hey, what's that over there? Luckily, as humans, we understand that when someone uses their finger to point at something we should probably draw attention to it. Chances are, though, if you try that with just about any animal they'll give you a blank stare and continue begging for food. Interestingly enough, dogs and elephants are two of the only animals that understand our odd finger gesture.

A professor was granted access to 11 elephants too try a point test with. She would use buckets and point to which one had fruit in it. The elephants were then allowed to either go right for the pointed bucket or search it out themselves. They chose the correct one 67.5 percent of the time. For comparison, human babies, which instinctively learn about pointing from a very early age, pass the pointing test 73 percent of the time.

Dogs were bred to understand the human gesture, and mimic it themselves (for hunting purposes). In fact, dogs will often beat chimps, the closest relatives to humans, in pointing tests the vast majority of the time! Finally, chimps get knocked down a peg on the intelligence scale!

(Source)