Elephant Names: New Study Reveals African Elephants Give Each Other 'Specific Calls'

African elephants have been found by scientists to use "elephant names" when calling each other, according to a new study led by researchers in Kenya and the United States. This social labeling is based on specific and unique vocalizations emitted by large mammals, which previous research shows to be highly intelligence and social animals. Now, the breakthrough findings confirm that elephants are the first non-human animals that do not imitate the receiver's call.

The elephant names portrayed in the said scientific report are not evidently as sophisticated and complex on how humans call each other by their first names or nicknames. Yet, the names expressed by the gentle giants involve low rumbling sounds. Prior to the study, scientists also found this trait to be possessed by other animals such as dolphins and parrots. Due to these developments, a growing body of research confirms that several animals may also be capable of calling names.

Elephant Names

Between humans, addressing someone we know or a stranger can stretch from varying attributions, ranging from nouns to pronouns and even adjectives. Regardless of these simple yet meaningful calls, individual names provide a sense of uniqueness and clarity to both the caller and receiver. However, this symbolic interaction among people is quite different with some animals, but they are still names.

In the study published as a pre-print and waiting for peer review in the journal bioRxiv, researchers confirm that African elephants can call the personal names of their kin and other members of an elephant group. The research team determined these elephant names with the help of artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms, as they studied different groups of elephants living in the wilderness of Kenya.

Individually Specific Calls

Described by the researchers as "individually specifical calls," the groundbreaking study found the unique linguistic ability of their selected African elephant group. The wild animals were able to vocalize others' elephant names without imitating the objects or entities that made the sound in the first place.

This unique communication skill is called non-imitative name analogs. On the other hand, imitative name analogs involve the mimicking of verbal sounds made by objects or individuals. For instance, barks among dogs resemble the same sound with no significant differences.

In the bioRxiv study, the team showed that wild African elephants addressed one another without evidence of imitating the vocalizations of their receivers. With this, the authors of the research paper confirmed the first evidence of a non-human species of communicating with each other through non-imitative name analogs of elephant names.

Although the 2023 study is unique and unprecedented, researchers more than a decade ago found evidence that members of the dolphin family are also capable of calling each other by their animal names. In 2011, scientists discovered that sperm whales provide a name for their members. In 2006, researchers found that dolphins give a name for themselves through unique whistles.