Humans are some of the few animals that call each other and respond to individual names. Most animals address conspecifics by imitating the calls of the addressee, but human names, in contrast, do not. If non-imitative name analogs were found in another species, this could help scientists better understand the evolution of language. Researchers observed wild African elephants that could address each other with specific calls without imitating the receiver’s answer. This newfound knowledge suggests that elephants do not rely on imitation to address one another, similar to humans.
According to George Wittemyer, an ecologist at Colorado State University and co-author of this research, “elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other —this naming is probably one of the things that underpin their ability to communicate to individuals.” Scientists believe that animals with advanced social structures and family groups that can separate and return together are more likely to use individual names. It is uncommon for wild animals to assign unique names to each other. Humans, however, are given names that they are referred to for the rest of their lives, and even dolphins invent their names by combining signature whistles. This rare talent of forming new sounds to address a species has been discovered in this elephant population.
The biologist’s curiosity led to the use of machine learning, an artificial intelligence that can imitate human behavior, to analyze the elephants’ communication. This innovative approach allowed the scientists to follow the elephants and observe their communication process on the savannah. By analyzing the sounds, the computer was able to predict which elephants were being addressed, a process that has informed and updated the field of animal communication research.
Because elephant rumbles contain sounds below the range of human hearing, the scientists have yet to determine which part of the elephant vocalization is actually a name. The scientists then tested these results by playing the audio back to individual elephants. They observed their body language and emotions, such as the lifting of the elephant’s trunk or its ears moving back and forth.
