[00:00.00]African elephants call each other by and answer to individual names, a new study finds.
[00:09.60]Such communication is rare in the animal world.
[00:14.74]African elephants are among the largest animals that live on land.
[00:21.40]The names are one part of the low sounds, or rumbles, elephants make.
[00:28.23]They can hear these sounds over long distances where they live in the savannah - large grassy areas of land mixed with woodlands.
[00:39.85]Scientists believe that animals with complex social structures may be more likely to use individual names.
[00:50.07]Stuart Pimm of Duke University is an ecologist who was not involved with the study.
[00:58.36]He said, "If you're looking after a large family, you've got to be able to say, 'Hey, Virginia, get over here!'"
[01:09.02]It is extremely rare for animals to call each other by individual names.
[01:15.99]Humans have names, of course, and dogs and cats may react when their names are called.
[01:24.18]Some ocean animals, including the dolphin, invent their own names when they are very young.
[01:32.29]And the birds called parrots may also use names.
[01:37.27]Each of these naming animals also have the ability to learn and say individual new sounds throughout their lives, as does the African elephant, the research shows.
[01:52.68]The study was released in the publication Nature Ecology & Evolution.
[02:00.34]In the study, biologists used machine learning to find the use of names in recordings of savanna elephant sounds.
[02:11.30]The sounds were recorded at Kenya's Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.
[02:20.23]The researchers followed the elephants as they traveled to observe which one called out and which one appeared to answer.
[02:30.32]By examining only the audio data, the computer model predicted which elephant was being called 28 percent of the time, likely due to the inclusion of its name.
[02:45.56]When fed meaningless data, the model only correctly predicted eight percent of calls.
[02:54.73]Biologist Mickey Pardo of Cornell University wrote the study.
[03:01.08]He said, "Just like humans, elephants use names, but probably don't use names in the majority" of their communications.
[03:11.97]The low rumbles elephants make also may include sounds that are below the range of human hearing.
[03:20.50]The scientists still do not know which sounds make up a name.
[03:27.08]Researchers tested their results by playing recordings to individual elephants.
[03:33.24]The elephants reacted more energetically, moving their ears and lifting their trunks, to recordings that contained their names.
[03:44.85]Sometimes elephants did not react in any way to the sounds of elephant names other than their own.
[03:54.32]Ecologist George Wittemyer of Colorado State University helped write the study.
[04:02.33]He also is a scientific adviser for the nonprofit Save the Elephants, which aims to protect the animal.
[04:12.80]He said, "Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other - this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals."
[04:28.50]Wittemyer added, "We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind."
[04:36.21]I'm Gregory Stachel.
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Words in This Story
range - n. all of the notes that a particular person can sing or that a particular musical instrument can make
incredible - adj. extremely good, great, or large
underpins - v. to strengthen or support (something) from below
cracked - v. to find an answer or solution to (something)
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