PREVIEW

Scientists have found that wild African elephants use names to address each other, much like humans.
This rare behaviour among nonhuman animals was revealed in a study conducted by Colorado State University (CSU) and published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Researchers from CSU, Save the Elephants, and ElephantVoices employed machine learning to confirm that elephant calls include a name-like component to identify the intended recipient.
This behaviour, previously suspected based on observation, was verified through playback experiments. Elephants responded positively to calls addressed to them, either by calling back or approaching the source, while calls meant for others were largely ignored.
“Dolphins and parrots call one another by 'name' by imitating the signature call of the addressee,” said lead author Michael Pardo, who conducted the study as an NSF postdoctoral researcher at CSU and Save the Elephants, a research and conservation organization based in Kenya. “By contrast, our data suggests that elephants do not rely on imitation of the receiver's calls to address one another, which is more similar to the way in which human names work.”  

The ability to produce new sounds to identify individuals is uncommon in the animal kingdom but essential for name-like communication. Such arbitrary vocal labeling indicates a high level of cognitive ability, allowing for complex social interactions and abstract thought.
Co-author George Wittemyer, a professor at CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources, noted: "If all we could do was make noises that sounded like what we were talking about, it would vastly limit our ability to communicate.”
Elephants, like humans, have evolved in socially complex environments, driving the development of sophisticated communication systems. These findings offer insights into the evolutionary pressures that shaped the ability to use names in both species.
"It's probably a case where we have similar pressures, largely from complex social interactions,” Wittemyer added. “That's one of the exciting things about this study, it gives us some insight into possible drivers of why we evolved these abilities.” 


Elephants communicate through a variety of vocalisations, including infrasonic sounds below human hearing range. These calls convey detailed information about the caller, such as identity, age, sex, emotional state, and context. The research team, using a novel signal processing technique, trained a machine-learning model to identify which elephant a call was directed to based solely on acoustic features.
Kurt Fristrup, another research scientist at CSU, explained: “Our finding that elephants are not simply mimicking the sound associated with the individual they are calling was the most intriguing. The capacity to utilise arbitrary sonic labels for other individuals suggests that other kinds of labels or descriptors may exist in elephant calls.” 
The study involved four years of research, including 14 months of intensive fieldwork in Kenya. Researchers recorded about 470 distinct calls from 101 elephants, corresponding with 117 unique receivers in Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.
Despite their remarkable communication abilities, the researchers stressed that much more data is needed to fully understand the extent of elephant vocal labeling and whether they name other entities such as food, water, or places.
The study's insights into elephant cognition and communication underscore the importance of conservation efforts.
Elephants are endangered due to poaching and habitat loss. Improved communication with these intelligent animals could potentially aid in their protection - as it will enable scientists to warn them of danger.
"It's tough to live with elephants, when you're trying to share a landscape and they're eating crops," Wittemyer concluded. “I'd like to be able to warn them, ‘Do not come here. You're going to be killed if you come here.’”