Elephants may have “names” for each other, not just memories of faces

Elephants are well-known for their excellent memory capabilities, social intelligence, and facial recognition skills; however, recent research shows even more fascinating facts about elephants as scientists believe these animals use individual-specific vocal labels, which can be called “names” to recognise and talk with each other. Elephant communication is already known quite well, thanks to studies conducted on African elephants whose calls may serve as an equivalent of names used by humans, thus creating closer ties between members of groups. Studying the way elephants communicate and label specific individuals gives further information on animals’ cognitive abilities and social life.

Elephant communication and social intelligence

It is widely known that the elephant is one of the species with highly sophisticated social structures. The communication among these animals entails vocalisations, body postures, and physical touches. Rumbles that elephants make are able to cover great distances up to several kilometres.

The scientists state that, contrary to popular belief, there is a structure to the vocalisations made by these mammals. According to the paper ‘Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants’:

“Elephants use learned vocal labels for addressing other members of their group.”

Such an observation proves that elephant communication is quite developed.

Do elephants really use “names” for each other

The concept of elephants having "names" was developed through the analysis of their responses to calls. In the research paper entitled ‘African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls’, Researchers found that elephants exhibited greater sensitivity to calls perceived as being uniquely addressed to them than to calls made in the general context of herd calls.

Machine learning models were employed by researchers to see whether there were specific patterns in elephant calls that could identify individuals. It was found that individual calls had a higher correlation with the identity of elephants than random probability.

Michael Pardo remarked on this during the study:

“Contrary to mimicry-based naming systems, it looks like elephants do not echo the call of the receiver. The call itself is arbitrary.”

It is important because it is similar to the naming conventions among humans, where names are an arbitrary assignment and not mimicry.

Memory, relationships, and identity in elephants

Elephants have already been celebrated for their memories, especially when it comes to recognising people despite prolonged periods of separation. The new findings seem to indicate that memory and vocalisation could be strongly related.

Elephant societies rely on teamwork, strong associations, and synchronised movement. A “calling” system would definitely facilitate better coordination within the herd.

The Amboseli Elephant Research Project, one of the longest-running elephant research projects, has established that elephants can sustain lifelong associations. The project’s director,

Cynthia Moss has described:

“Elephants lead socially complex lives, with family associations lasting many years.”

Vocal labelling would be a natural way of doing so.

What this means for animal cognition and language evolution

The fact that elephants could potentially communicate via naming has changed the way we see animal intelligence. The idea that symbolic language is unique to humans could very well be wrong since elephants, among other animals, might have evolved an independent form of such communication.

This discovery has also shed light on the development of human language. In case elephants use labels, this would mean that there were certain social pressures that allowed for a naming system to emerge at least twice, independently, or even at once, prior to humans developing language as we know it today.

As the scientists write in their paper:

"This ability may be an important feature of complex social cognition."

While elephants have always been known for their great memory, there might be much more to them than that. Recognising each other based on vocal labels is a skill that shows elephants' intelligence and even their emotional world beyond what we ever suspected.