Don’t call them Dumbo.
African elephants can not only communicate among themselves but actually call each other by unique names while roaming around the savanna, a newly published academic study has revealed.
“Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver,” researchers said in the study published by Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“We used machine learning to demonstrate that the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call’s acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver’s vocalizations,” they wrote. “Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls.”
A new study by researchers in Colorado, Kenya and Norway determined that African elephants use names to address each other. APThe findings make the pachyderms one of the few animals capable of using unique names to address each other, comparable to dolphins, which are believed to communicate through whistles.
In the case of the elephants, the communication is through “low rumbles” that can travel for miles.
Other creatures, including dogs and parrots, are known to respond to names and specific words.
Elephants are known to have complex social and familial structures.
The study was compiled by researchers at Colorado State University and experts at elephant research and preservation organizations in Kenya and Norway.
New findings that elephants call each other by name makes them a rarity in the animal kingdom, akin to dolphins. George Wittemyer / SWNSAmong the tools they used were recordings of elephants at two Kenyan reserves, Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park, the study said.
“If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here,'” Duke University ecologist Stuart Primm quipped to the Associated Press.
With Post wires
