Elephants use calls that may be similar to names.

2024/06/12 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Zoologia

Researchers have come to the conclusion that the calls that wild elephants use from African savanna may be similar to the names that humans use, and they have published it in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Dolphins and parrots have also been shown to use specific sounds to correct themselves, but in these cases they do so by mimicking the sounds emitted by the receiver. In the case of elephants, on the contrary, they don't seem to do so, so researchers have come to the conclusion that these elephant calls are more similar to the names we humans use.

Using machine learning, researchers analyzed 469 elephant calls. And the machine learning model was able to identify 27.5 percent of the recipients of these calls. They also compared how 17 elephants behaved from the base when they heard the recordings of calls addressed to them or to another elephant. And they saw that elephants would come closer and respond vocally more when the call was addressed to them, than in the case of calls addressed to other elephants. This suggests that elephants know the calls addressed to them.