Results of a study published recently in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution found that wild African elephants (Loxodonta Africana) may address each other with name-like calls that, similar to personal names used by humans, do not appear to imitate sounds made by the individual being addressed.
Lead author Michael Pardo, a behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, and who conducted the study as a CSU post-doctoral researcher in collaboration with Kenyan conservation organisation Save the Elephants, said while dolphins and parrots call one another by ‘name’, imitating the signature call of the addressee, the data suggested that elephants do not rely on imitation of the receiver’s calls to address one another, which is similar to the way in which human names work.
Between 1986 and 2022 researchers used machine-learning methods to analyse recordings of 469 calls, or ‘rumbles’ made by wild African elephant female-offspring groups in the Amboseli National Park and the Samburu, and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya. The machine-learning model correctly identified the recipients of 27.5 per cent of these calls, a higher percentage than the model detected when being fed a control audio for comparison.
The scientists also compared the reactions of 17 wild elephants in response to recordings of calls that were either originally addressed to them or another elephant. The group included a family dubbed ‘The Spice Girls’ by the scientists. These animals approached the speaker playing the recordings more quickly and were more likely to answer with their own calls when the recorded call had originally been addressed to them. When compared to calls originally addressed to another elephant it suggests elephants can recognise their own and other elephants’ individual calls.
Co-author George Wittemeyer, a professor at CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources, and chairman of the scientific board of StE, said the use of arbitrary vocal labels indicated elephants may also be capable of abstract thought.
“If all we could do was make noises that sounded like what we were talking about, it would vastly limit our ability to communicate. It’s probably a case where we have similar pressures, largely from complex social interactions, That’s one of the exciting things about this study, it gives us some insight into possible drivers of why we evolved these abilities,” he said.
Further research is needed to investigate the contexts in which elephants use name-like calls, and the scientists suggested that understanding this could help to illuminate the origins of these calls in both humans and elephants.
“These new insights into elephant cognition and communication revealed by the study strengthens the case for their conservation. Elephants are classified as endangered due to poaching for their ivory tusks, and habitat loss from development. Because of their size they need a lot of space, and they can be destructive to property and hazardous to people,” they said.
Anne Layton-Bennett