African savanna elephants communicate more like humans than previously thought, new research shows—opening up new possibilities for elephant cognition.
African savanna elephants walk roam the Okavango Delta in Botswana, which has the highest population of the species.noticed that sometimes an elephant would call out to their kin. Sometimes, a bunch would answer, and other times only one would respond.
Elephants seem to do something different: They use arbitrary vocal labels that have nothing to do with sounds or physical properties of the listener.In human language, an arbitrary label would be calling a bovine a “cow,” since that word does not resemble, either physically or acoustically, the animal itself. A simpler label, which scientists call an iconic label, would refer to a bovine as a “moo,” since that’s based on and imitates sound the animal makes.
Elephants produce a range of vocalizations, from trumpets and barks to many types of rumbles. Their structures are complicated. For example, rumbles are low-frequency sounds, partially outside the range of human hearing, that not only vary a lot but can travel through the ground and last anywhere from half a second to 12 seconds. That diversity can contain a lot of information, which makes them challenging to interpret.
Hence, the acoustic structure of calls from a Samburu elephant named Frida to a matriarch, Donatella, were more alike than Frida's calls to other elephants, like her cousin Rothko.The researchers' new analysis found contradictory answers as to whether different elephants use the same name to address the same receiver.One of several possible explanations is that different elephants use name derivatives to address the same receiver—somewhat akin to nicknames.
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