Elephants Call Each Other by Name
canopic jug writes:
Multiple sites are reporting on an article in Nature Ecology & Evolution about communication between African elephants (paywall). Using machine learning to analyze the low rumblings that elephants make, they researchs conclude that elephants have names for each other and use them.
Wild African elephants call each other by their names, according to a study published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution - making them the only nonhuman animals known to use language like this.
- Vox, Elephants have names - and they use them with each other
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For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya.
The research "not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others," lead study author Michael Pardo said.
- Science Alert, Wild Elephants Invent Names For One Another in Surprise Sign of Abstract Thinking
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The researchers analyzed vocalizations - mostly rumbles generated by elephants using their vocal cords, similar to how people speak - made by more than 100 elephants in Amboseli National Park and Samburu National Reserve.
Using a machine-learning model, the researchers identified what appeared to be a name-like component in these calls identifying a specific elephant as the intended addressee. The researchers then played audio for 17 elephants to test how they would respond to a call apparently addressed to them as well as to a call apparently addressed to some other elephant.
- The Hindustan Times, Elephants use 'names' to communicate with each other: Study
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So Pardo and some colleagues analyzed recordings of 469 rumbling calls that wild African elephants had made to each other in the Amboseli National Park and Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya between 1986 and 2022.
For every recorded call, the researchers knew the identity of the elephant making the rumble as well as, based on the context, the elephant that was being addressed.
- NPR, Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to call them
Previously,
(2021) Wise Old Elephants Keep the Young Calm
(2014) Elephants: Best Sense of Smell by a Wide Margin
(2014) Elephants Can Tell Human Ethnicity by our Voices
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