Well, it was news to ME...

[johncomic]

elephants creating their own paintings

elephants creating their own music

There are claims that we are anthropomorphizing animals and "reading too much into" what they produce when it "coincidentally" resembles our own arts. There are claims that animal art simply points out the fraudulence of all abstract art and abstract music.

Me, I have no trouble accepting that a non-human intelligence [even one "less developed" than ours, at least as we define "developed"] can truly create valid art, given the opportunity. And if that makes me gullible, well, right now I find it difficult to give a shit. I find these paintings and songs strangely breathtaking and compelling.

To say that "only we can create true art" may be as species-ist as when we used to say that "only we use tools" or "only we wage war" or "only we kill for sport" -- all centuries-old truisms that have been shot down by recent research. For good or ill, we are not as separate from the rest of the fauna as we might like to believe.