Elephants call to each other by name

Elephants call each other by name!

Elephants call out to each other using their names, according to research from a new study.

Researchers in the US found that, like humans, African elephants in Kenya will call to their friends with individual rumbles and grumbles.

The scientists are excited because their discovery “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”, said study author, Michael Pardo.

Other animals, like dolphins and parrots are known to copy sounds, but the study suggests elephants and humans are the only two species on Earth known to invent unique names for each other.

How did scientists discover elephants have names?

Researchers recorded elephant calls in Kenya

The team of researchers looked at elephant calls or “rumbles” recorded at Kenya’s Samburu national reserve and Amboseli national park between 1986 and 2022.

They then used an AI algorithm - a set of instructions to teach a computer to do something - to help them narrow the calls down.

Using this technology they identified 469 distinct calls, of which 101 were of elephants giving a call and 117 were of receiving one.

Names were not always used in the elephant calls, but when they were, it was often over a long distance, and from adult elephants speaking to young elephants.

When the researchers played a clip to an elephant of their friend or family member calling out their name, the animal reacted positively and “energetically” and moved towards the speaker, the researchers said.

But the same elephant was not really interested when they played the names of others.

Can we talk to elephants?

"Over here Sally!"

Well... not yet.

The researchers say that more work is needed to understand the elephants' calls to figure out if they name other things they interact with, like food, water and places.

Co-author George Wittemyer says being able to communicate with elephants could be a gamechanger for their protection in the wild.

“It’s tough to live with elephants, when you’re trying to share a landscape and they’re eating crops,”

“I’d like to be able to warn them" he said, not to eat people's crops or they might get hurt.