Story by Jayme DeLoss
Photos by George Wittemyer
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In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists at Colorado State University (CSU) have confirmed that wild African elephants use name-like calls to address each other, marking a rare cognitive ability among nonhuman animals. The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, reveals that elephants respond to specific calls directed at them, much like humans do when called by their names.
Calling Elephants by Name
Researchers from CSU, Save the Elephants, and ElephantVoices utilized machine learning to analyze elephant calls, discovering that these calls contain unique identifiers meant for individual elephants. When played recordings of these calls, the elephants responded by calling back or approaching the speaker, demonstrating recognition. Calls intended for other elephants elicited little to no response, affirming the targeted nature of these vocalizations.
“Dolphins and parrots call one another by ‘name’ by imitating the signature call of the addressee,” explained lead author Michael Pardo, who conducted the study as an NSF postdoctoral researcher at CSU and Save the Elephants. “By contrast, our data suggest that elephants do not rely on imitation of the receiver’s calls to address one another, which is more similar to the way in which human names work.”
Advanced Cognitive Skills
The ability to produce new sounds, essential for identifying individuals by name, is uncommon among animals. This form of arbitrary communication—where sounds represent ideas without imitation—greatly enhances communicative capabilities and is indicative of advanced cognitive skills. Co-author George Wittemyer, a professor in CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources and chairman of the scientific board of Save the Elephants, emphasized the significance of this ability: “If all we could do was make noises that sounded like what we were talking about, it would vastly limit our ability to communicate.”
Evolutionary Insights
Despite diverging tens of millions of years ago, both elephants and humans have developed socially complex structures and high levels of communication within their species. The researchers propose that similar social pressures likely drove the development of arbitrary vocal labeling in both species.
“It’s probably a case where we have similar pressures, largely from complex social interactions,” Wittemyer said. “That’s one of the exciting things about this study—it gives us some insight into possible drivers of why we evolved these abilities.”
Complex Elephant Communication
Elephants are known for their vocal expressiveness, utilizing a wide range of calls that convey identity, age, sex, emotional state, and behavioral context. These vocalizations span a broad frequency spectrum, including infrasonic sounds below the range of human hearing, allowing elephants to coordinate group movements over long distances.
CSU researcher Kurt Fristrup developed a novel signal processing technique to detect subtle differences in call structure. He and Pardo trained a machine-learning model to identify which elephant a call was addressed to based solely on its acoustic features. “Our finding that elephants are not simply mimicking the sound associated with the individual they are calling was the most intriguing,” Fristrup said.
Eavesdropping on Elephants
The research, conducted over four years and involving 14 months of intensive fieldwork in Kenya, recorded about 470 distinct calls from 101 unique callers directed at 117 unique receivers. The elephants’ energetic and positive responses to calls from friends and family members confirmed that they recognized their names.
When the researchers played back samples, the elephants reacted “energetically” and positively to recordings of their friends and family members calling to them but did not react enthusiastically or move toward calls directed to others, demonstrating that they recognized their names.
Implications for Conservation
While more data is needed to fully understand the intricacies of elephant communication, this study strengthens the case for elephant conservation. Classified as endangered due to poaching and habitat loss, elephants face significant threats. Improved understanding of their communication could be pivotal for their protection.
“It’s tough to live with elephants when you’re trying to share a landscape and they’re eating crops,” Wittemyer said. “I’d like to be able to warn them, ‘Do not come here. You’re going to be killed if you come here.’”
Though direct conversation with elephants remains a distant dream, the insights gained from this study open new possibilities for enhancing human-elephant coexistence and ensuring the survival of these majestic creatures.
Courtesy: Colorado State University
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