WASHINGTON — African elephants call each other and respond to individual names — something few wild animals do, according to new research published Monday.
The names are a part of the low cries of elephants that can be heard over long distances in the savannah. Scientists believe that animals with complex social structures and family groups that are separated and then reunited frequently may be more likely to use individual names.
“If you’re taking care of a big family, you have to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, come here!’ said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not involved in the study.
It is extremely rare for wild animals to call each other by unique names. People have names, of course, and our dogs come when called their names. Baby dolphins they invent their own names, called signature whistles, and parrots can also use names.
Each of these naming species also has the ability to learn to utter unique new sounds throughout its life—a rare talent that elephants also possess.
For studies in Nature Ecology & Evolutionbiologists used machine learning to detect name usage in an audio library of savannah elephant vocalizations recorded in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.
The researchers followed the elephants in jeeps to observe who called and who seemed to respond—for example, if a mother called a calf or a matriarch called a tusker who later returned to the family group.
Analyzing only the audio data, the computer model predicted which elephant was being addressed 28 percent of the time, likely due to the inclusion of its name. When fed meaningless data, the model correctly scored only 8% of the calls.
“Just like humans, elephants use names, but they probably don’t use names in the majority of utterances, so we wouldn’t expect 100%,” said study author and Cornell University biologist Mickey Pardo.
Elephant rumbles include sounds that are below the range of human hearing. Scientists still do not know which part of phonetics is the name.
The researchers tested their results by playing recordings to individual elephants, which responded more energetically, with ears flapping and trunks raised, to recordings containing their names. Sometimes the elephants completely ignored the voices addressed to others.
“Elephants are incredibly social, they’re always talking and touching each other – this name is probably one of the things that supports their ability to communicate with people,” said co-author and University of Colorado ecologist George Wittemyer, who is also a scientific advisor for the non-profit Save the Elephants.
“We just opened the door to the elephant’s mind a little bit.”