The researchers discovered that African elephants could call each other by their names while emitting their low rumblings, which they can hear at great distances even though they include sounds imperceptible to humans.
Los African elephants They call each other and responden aindividual namessomething that few wild animals do, according to one new research published on Monday in the journal ‘Nature Ecology and Evolution’.
The names are a part of the low rumblings that elephants can hear from great distances across the savanna. Scientists believe that animals with complex social structures and family groups that break up and then reunite often may be more likely to use individual names.
“If you’re taking care of a large family, you have to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, come here,'” says Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University who was not involved in the study. Is very rare that wild animals call each other by unique names. Humans have names, of course, and companion dogs come when their name is called. The dolphins babies make up their own names, called signature whistles, and parrots They can also use names.
Each of these named species also has the ability to learn to pronounce new unique sounds throughout their lives, a rare talent that elephants also possess.
Like humans, elephants use names
For the study, the biologists used machine learning to detect name usage in a library of sounds of elephant vocalizations of savanna recorded in the Samburu National Reserve and the Amboseli National Park, in Kenya.
Los researchers followed the elephants in ‘jeeps’ to observe who called and who seemed to respond, for example, if a mother called a calf or if a matriarch called a straggler who later rejoined the family group.
Analyzing only the audio data, the computer model predicted which elephant they were targeting in the 28% of the occasions, probably due to the inclusion of his name. With meaningless data, the model only got 8% of the calls right.
“Like humans, elephants use names, but probably not in most expressions, so you can’t expect 100%“says Mickey Pardo, author of the study and a biologist at Cornell University. The elephants’ rumblings include sounds that are below the reach of human hearing. Scientists still don’t know which part of the vocalization is the name.
Elephants responded to recordings containing their names
The researchers tested their results by playing recordings to individual elephants, which responded more energetically, flapping their ears and raising their trunks, at times. recordings containing their names. Sometimes elephants completely ignored vocalizations directed at others.
“Elephants are incredibly sociable, they are always talking and touching each other; probablythe fact of name es one of the factors that support their ability to communicate with others,” says study co-author George Wittemyer, an ecologist at Colorado State University who is also a scientific advisor to the nonprofit Save the Elephants. “We have just opened the door a little to the minds of elephants”he claims.
