According to sources, UK scientists have said that African elephants have demonstrated what appears to be an instinctive understanding of human gestures.

In a series of tests, researcher Ann Smet, of the University of St Andrews, offered the animals a choice between two identical buckets, then pointed at the one containing a hidden treat. From the first trial, the elephants chose the correct bucket.

 Prof Richard Byrne, a co-author on the research, said the elephants had been rescued from culling operations and trained for riding.

"They specifically train the elephants to respond to vocal cues. They don't use any gestures at all," said Prof Byrne.

"The idea is that the handler can walk behind the elephant and just tell it what to do with words."

Despite this, the animals seemed to grasp the meaning of pointing from the outset. This makes them the only non-human animals to understand the gesture without being trained to do so.

 The researchers said their findings might explain how elephants have successfully been tamed and have "historically had a close bond with humans, in spite of being potentially dangerous and unmanageable due to their great size".

But the scientists added the results could be a hint that the animals gesture to one another in the wild with their "highly controllable trunks".

Animal keeper Rachel Melling describes the bond she feels with the elephants she works with and how they "respond to body language".

According to sources, Prof Byrne said studying elephants helped build a map of part of the evolutionary tree that is very distant from humans.

"They're so unrelated to us," he said. "So if we find human-like abilities in an animal like an elephant, that hasn't shared a common ancestor with people for more than 100 million years, we can be pretty sure that it's evolved completely separately, by what's called convergent evolution."