Elephants have distinct names for one another, CSU researchers discover
Wild African elephants pictured napping. Researchers have found elephants assign names or calls to one another similar to the way people do.
Elephants have distinct names for one another, CSU researchers discover
African elephants are among the first animals known to have names similar to humans.
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Elephants have distinct names for each other just like humans do, say researchers at Colorado State University who've been studying wild African elephants.
One of the study’s authors, George Wittemyer, said it’s already well-known that elephants are complex intellectual and social creatures.
“Elephants maintain really tight bonds between mothers and their offspring, siblings, grandmothers, the nuclear family,” said Wittemyer, noting that elephants also have strong bonds with non-relatives. “And one of the things that’s quite obvious when you’re in the field with them is that they’re constantly conversing … and it seems like it's a pretty key component to their social networks.”
How did researchers first realize elephants had names?
Researchers said while observing elephant behavior in the wild, they noticed that when elephants gathered in large groups, sometimes the matriarch of a group would give a call and the entire group might respond by gathering around her or following her.“Then at other times, she gives seemingly a very similar call and nobody will react except a single elephant in the group and that elephant will respond or come up to her,” Wittemyer said.
From that, researchers hypothesized that elephants have a way to communicate with whom they want to talk.
