Elephants Can Call Each Other by Individual Names, New Study Finds

Somewhere in the low rumblings of an elephant are names to get each other’s attention.

Dr. George Wittemyer of Colorado State University tells APTN, “elephants are highly social, highly vocal species.”

If you listen closely, you won’t hear names like Judy or Clyde, but elephants have developed a pattern of speech to communicate with each other.

Newly-released research says elephant speech includes individual names by using the recorded audio, scientists were able to determine which elephant was being addressed about 30 percent of the time.

“We undertook this study by recording elephants. They speak infrasonically and sonically. About half of the sound in their call is below our level of hearing so we actually cannot hear it. So we had to use this special microphone to record these calls. We also had to be quite close to them because sound attenuates with distance so we wanted to get all the structure in that call in order to study what's actually going on,” Wittemyer said.

Just as humans wouldn’t always say another person’s name in conversation, it seems elephants don’t either.

Dr. Michael Pardo of Colorado State University tells APTN, “I think there’s a lot of potential to learn more about elephant calls. I think we’ve just scratched the surface of just how complex their communication is.”

The authors hope learning more about elephants will encourage people to protect them.

“I think if people appreciate elephants more this may increase understanding and tolerance of elephants and could help in their conservation that way,” Pardo said.

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