Elephants use names to call their fellow elephants.
This is what a study carried out in Kenya reveals.
Elephants would thus be the only other known species other than Man to possess this ability.
Elephants call each other with the equivalent of a name specific to each individual, according to a study based on the observation of two wild herds in Kenya, published this Monday in the scientific journal Nature. This study “shows that elephants not only use a specific vocalization for each individual, but that they recognize and respond to a call intended for them while ignoring those addressed to others”declared its main author, Michael Pardo.
The results obtained support “the idea that elephants can make up arbitrary names for each other”, continued this specialist in pachyderm communication at the American University of Colorado State in a press release. The proof comes from recordings made between 1986 and 2022 by the association Save the elephants in the Samburu Reserve and Amboseli National Park in Kenya, adult females and their young. With, after a passage through analysis software, a set of 469 calls including 101 calling elephants, and 117 recipients.
Only known case in the animal world
The pachyderm joins Man among the species that we know are capable of assigning an arbitrary name to the recipient of its call, and not an imitation of the latter’s voice. Because to date, only two animal species, the Bottlenose Dolphin and a parrot, the Red-fronted Parakeet, are known to address a conspecific by imitating the vocal signature of the recipient of their call. Conversely, man assigns names “without inherent link to the people or objects to which they refer”. Michael Pardo had the intuition that elephants, whose social relationships are rich, could have developed a similar system for naming themselves, “thanks to their extensive vocal abilities”.
An ability to think abstractly
In practice, researchers observed that one individual addressed another with a specific signal. This name was not necessarily used by others to address this same individual. On the other hand, the elephant receiving this call clearly distinguished the one addressed to him and ignored those sent to conspecifics. What scientists discovered by playing recordings of calls to individuals, depending on whether they understood their “name” or not. These observations “indicate that they have a capacity for abstract thought”according to University of Colorado professor George Wittemyer, study supervisor.
The calls, commonly made in the form of grunts, are more frequent at a distance as well as in the case of adults speaking to young. Adults also use these calls more readily than young people, suggesting that learning to make these names takes years. Researchers are wondering about the origin of this gift, in a species whose distant ancestors diverged from primates and cetaceans around 90 million years ago.
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For the director of Save the elephantsFrank Pope, these animals and humans share many particularities, including an existence in “extended family units, with rich social lives”. He is convinced that these recent discoveries are only “the beginning of revelations to come”. The scientist now wonders why elephants wouldn’t also have names for places, or the ability to speak to each other about a third party.
