In a remarkable experiment where artificial intelligence meets elephants, researchers have successfully demonstrated how the giant mammals call each other using individual names.
According to a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, African savannah elephants in Kenya were observed and listened to using machine learning software called Elephant Voices that analyzed calls made between two elephant herds.
The research took place in Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park over four years, including 14 months of fieldwork, during which elephants were tracked and observed and their ‘calls’ recorded. Some 469 unique calls or “rumbles” were captured by the African elephants during the experiment.
What does the study reveal about how elephants communicate?
It has long been known that elephants are very social animals.
“The elephant social network is incredibly rich, incredibly nuanced and incredibly complex, with this hierarchical structure of different types of relationships, preferences and interactions,” George Wittemyer, a behavioral ecologist at Colorado State University, l one of the institutes involved in the study in Kenya. , told Al Jazeera.
Initial observations by researchers conducting the study in Kenya appeared to show that the elephants were using a call-and-response communication system. It was noticed that the matriarchs, the female leaders of the elephant herds, would make a call, which sounded like a growl, from inside the group of elephants and that the entire herd would respond.
However, shortly after, the same matriarch made another similar growl and only one elephant far from the group gave a response while rushing back towards the group.
“And so in those cases, it’s so obvious to the observer, to us on the ground, that something happened there and everyone in the group knew it,” Wittemyer said. “The call was directed to this other person. This individual received and perceived this also, responded and came to the group. And so you wonder, “Do they use names?” »
The observations suggest that there may be a unique identifier embedded in elephant rumbles that each elephant can recognize. These unique sounds are thought to be similar to how humans identify themselves.
Wittemyer noted, “Maybe we greet each other with our names, but it’s not like we’re constantly using names with each other once we have each other’s attention, once we we are immersed in conversation. And it seems that this is also the case for elephants.
How were elephant sounds recorded?
Although humans are familiar with the loud sound of elephants, some elephant sounds are infrasonic, meaning they use a frequency too low to be heard by humans. Therefore, specialist equipment was used to record and analyze the rumbling sounds. “They use vocal cords and make these sounds, but the structure of these sounds is so different from ours,” Wittemyer explained.
Specialized AI learning software was used to identify specific and unique names used in reference to particular elephants, appearing in the rumbles. Using this software, researchers were able to determine that nouns were used in growls between elephants in almost a third (27.5%) of the “calls.”
Identifying and understanding other parts of the rumbles would require additional research.
During the tests, the researchers played a sound from a loudspeaker that they believed to be an elephant’s “name,” and the elephant responded by raising its head, flapping its ears, while growling in heading towards the speaker.
In other cases, when the speaker’s call was not its “name,” the researchers found, the elephant could raise its head, but the response was less active in a behavioral sense.
Do other animals use similar call signs?
Not exactly. While dolphins and parrots imitate the sounds of other members of their species to address each other, elephants are the first known non-human animals to use unique names without resorting to imitation.
In another report published last month by the journal Nature Communications, researchers analyzed thousands of recorded calls made by sperm whales, revealing a “phonetic alphabet” in their “click” sequences. This discovery indicates that sperm whales use much more complex communication systems, called “codas”, than previously thought.
Unlike humpback whales that “sing,” sperm whales make clicking sounds, using a process called echolocation by which sound waves bounce off distant objects and return to the whale so that it can determine where the object is. Whales use echolocation to hunt and navigate the ocean depths.
