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Elephants call to each other by name
Image source, Getty Images
Elephants call out to each other using their names, according to research from a new study.
Researchers in the US found that, like humans, African elephants in Kenya will call to their friends with individual rumbles and grumbles.
The scientists are excited because their discovery 鈥渘ot only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others鈥, said study author, Michael Pardo.
Other animals, like dolphins and parrots are known to copy sounds, but the study suggests elephants and humans are the only two species on Earth known to invent unique names for each other.
How did scientists discover elephants have names?
Image source, George Wittemyer
The team of researchers looked at elephant calls or 鈥渞umbles鈥 recorded at Kenya鈥檚 Samburu national reserve and Amboseli national park between 1986 and 2022.
They then used an AI algorithm - a set of instructions to teach a computer to do something - to help them narrow the calls down.
Using this technology they identified 469 distinct calls, of which 101 were of elephants giving a call and 117 were of receiving one.
Names were not always used in the elephant calls, but when they were, it was often over a long distance, and from adult elephants speaking to young elephants.
When the researchers played a clip to an elephant of their friend or family member calling out their name, the animal reacted positively and 鈥渆nergetically鈥 and moved towards the speaker, the researchers said.
But the same elephant was not really interested when they played the names of others.
Can we talk to elephants?
Image source, Getty Images
Well... not yet.
The researchers say that more work is needed to understand the elephants' calls to figure out if they name other things they interact with, like food, water and places.
Co-author George Wittemyer says being able to communicate with elephants could be a gamechanger for their protection in the wild.
鈥淚t鈥檚 tough to live with elephants, when you鈥檙e trying to share a landscape and they鈥檙e eating crops,鈥
鈥淚鈥檇 like to be able to warn them" he said, not to eat people's crops or they might get hurt.