‘Elephants use names for each other — this ability was only known in humans so far’

George Wittemyer is Professor of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. Speaking from East Africa to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he explains his new findings on elephants, their naming patterns — and human beings:
Can you tell us about your recent research on elephants?
■ We’ve been studying African elephants in Samburu, northern Kenya, for decades. We know these elephants individually. As a species, elephants are highly social beings — they’re constantly interacting with their family members and herd. During these interactions, we observed they kept speaking to each other or vocalising. Sometimes, this vocalisation went back and forth — the matriarch would speak and the others would respond. Evidently, vocal communication is a very fundamental part of an elephant’s social organisation. A group moves along and a matriarch gives a rumble call, with a crescendo of responses from everyone. At other times, there’d be a call but only one individual would respond, walking upto the elephant who’d spoken, etc. In that event, one individual was communicating specifically to another. So, in this study, we asked if the elephants had some sort of vocal label they used to identify each other — like a name.
LOTS IN A NAME: African elephants, famously social beings, travel huge distances in their herds seeking water — having names for each other helps keep the tribe together and also enables mothers to guide and protect children (Photos: iStock & Getty Images)
We collected many elephant calls in as many behavioural contexts as possible and used a machine learning approach to understand their structures and similarities — we found very good evidence then that the elephants were using names in their interactions. From our data, the two scenarios which emerged included a contact call, where one individual rumbles and specifically tries to contact another one. The other context was mother to calf — the mother rumbles to her child to direct or placate it and it responds to her. We also analysed greeting calls when elephants met each other — those too have vocal labels but they are used less here, just as when humans meet and talk, they don’t keep using each other’s names.

Can you tell us more features of these rumble calls?■ The elephant rumble is quite complicated. Much of it is in the infrasonic range, so it’s sub-human hearing. We literally can’t pick this up, so we had to use specialised microphones to capture this information. Also, you must remain in close proximity to elephants to record all the information in their rumbles because the sound attenuates with distance. We therefore had a limited library — for comparison, ChatGPT, the AI-based computer language model, uses literally every digitally published item, which means drawing from billions of records.


So, we were working with some limitations and still need to figure out the syntax for these vocalisations. They go from infrasonic to sonic range and have a temporal part as well, where the rumble oscillates over time, like when we stress on parts of our speech. We look forward to teasing out the structural and syntax parts from such rich conversations among elephants.
Do other species also use names in this manner in their speech?
■ This is very rare in the animal kingdom. We find some evidence among dolphins and certain species in the parrot family — however, these imitate the vocalisation of another individual. Elephants are not doing that — they are given a name arbitrarily, like we are, and they use these to identify and direct each other. We think mothers name calves, creating and bestowing a name on a child, teaching it this name and telling everyone else too — the entire group then uses it. We have never seen this in any other creature, besides ourselves.

MY NAME IS JOY! Matriarchs name their baby and tell others this title

What does this tell us about the world of elephants?
■ This gives us a first understanding that elephants are able to conceptualise things abstractly — they can label objects and use that classification. This is a unique trait — it is the foundation of the very complex communication humans use which is integral to our success. Elephants have some of these characteristics too. We have now opened the door into seeing how their minds work.

What does this imply for the way humans treat elephants?
■ We’re always creating excuses for our bad behaviour towards non human species and some humans too. We’ve downplayed the intelligence of animals for millennia — we consider them below humanity and they don’t get regard or consideration because we feel they are less capable than us. However, many studies now point out how most animals are both very intelligent and complex in the way they perceive and understand the world — chips are breaking off the incorrect narrative humans created about animals being inferior to us.

THEIR JUMBO IQ: Indian elephants are highly intelligent vocal learners

Could Indian elephants use names too?
■ I’d be surprised if we didn’t find this in Indian elephants. We know they too are very intelligent, highly social and vocal beings. Some of the early research showing elephants are vocal learners and can learn and emulate sound with meaning, like human beings, actually started with Asian elephants. These skills evolved for a purpose — that is communication between individuals. I’m sure Asian elephants have very interesting things to say to one another.