Like Humans, Elephants Have Names And They Use Them To Call Each Other, Study Finds

A study revealed that elephants make different vocal sounds to address their fellow mates and the sounds are new names that are created by the elephants. While dolphins and parrots were previously recorded of naming each other through mimicking the sounds of other members of their kind, elephants elephants are the only known non-human creatures to employ original vocalizations as names other than imitating, the researchers pointed out according to a report in The Guardian.

In the new study, scientists from several countries employed an artificial intelligence algorithm to identify the vocalisations of two groups of wild savanna elephants in Kenya. The research found that each elephant has its own signal and the other elephants understand the call addressed to them.  It also mentioned that they also do not pay attention to the calls for other elephants. “This means that elephants are able to decide if a call made was intended for them even if the call is played out of context,” said the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University as per The Guardian.

The researchers sifted through elephant “rumbles” recorded at Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park between 1986 and 2022. They used a machine learning algorithm to categorize the calls into 469 different call types; 101 elephants made a call, and 117 received one.

Elephants have been known to produce a variety of vocalization that include trumpeting, vocalizations that fall below the audible range of human hearing. It is important to note that the names were not necessarily used in the elephant calls. But when names were called out, it was loud, and usually over a distance, and when the adults were speaking to the young elephants.

The study also showed that using names were more common among adults than calves and one could take ages mastering this talent. The most common call was described as ‘a tonal and complex vocalisation at the bass range,’ so said the study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Here’s how the elephants reacted to the calls

In the case where the researchers used a speaker to call an elephant’s name in a friendly voice that is similar to that of a friend or a family member, the response was positive and what the researchers termed as ‘enthusiastic’. However, the same elephant paid little interest when played the names of others.

From this, it appears that elephants and humans are the only two animals known to invent “arbitrary” names for each other, rather than merely copying the sound of the recipient, The Guardian reported.

The researchers urged to conduct further investigation into the evolutionary source of this talent for name-calling because the precursors of elephants are believed to have split from other mammal groups, such as primates and cetaceans, 90 million years ago.

However, despite the dissimilarities, common features that both human beings and elephants enjoy include “large, complex social structures which are reminiscent of family groups, with a very active social life and advanced brains,” according to Save the Elephants’ Frank Pope.

“Just how elephants use names for each other is probably only the tip of the iceberg,’ is probably the next thing that we are to learn.”