Elephants Have Names for Each Other Like People Do

Colorado State University reports on a study (published in Nature Ecology & Evolution) showing that wild African elephants address each other with name-like calls. Using machine learning on years of recordings from Amboseli and Samburu in Kenya, the team showed that elephants do not simply imitate the receiver's call (as dolphins do) but use arbitrary vocal labels — the same abstract, symbolic naming we associate with humans. Test recordings of name calls produced clear responses from the named individuals and not from others.