When scientists study elephant communications, they often focus on females, and for seemingly good reason: Previous research had found that only females were socially integrated enough for individual members to engage in complex communication.
A new study in the journal PeerJ demolished that assumption, however, and in the process revealed to scientists that elephants in general are far more intelligent than previously believed.
To learn this, the American researchers recorded the rumbles of elephants during the June-July field season at the Mushara waterhole in Namibia's Etosha National Park in 2005, 2007, 2011 and 2017. While elephants are best known for their loud trumpeting, their more nuanced and complicated communications are believed to occur during their "low rumbles." By analyzing the "low rumbles" of herds of male elephants grazing and drinking at the Mushara waterhole, scientists learned that specific noises corresponded with the members moving from one location to another. More intriguingly, the researchers pinpointed specific male elephants who would initiate these calls (usually the elderly mentor males within those groups), with other individuals picking up that call at specific points.
"These ritualized let’s go rumbles made by the most socially integrated males really make my heart sing," study co-author, Dr. Caitlin E O'Connell-Rodwell from Stanford University, told Salon. "Why? Because young males grow up in a highly social environment within family groups, where they have 24-7 opportunities to play and reinforce bonds either their brothers and cousins. Once they leave their families at the age of 12-15, they suddenly find themselves in a whole new social situation — alone until they can forge ties with other independent bulls within the population."
Like any human who wanders into a strange environment, one of their biggest concerns is not finding a friendly face. After all, just like an unfamiliar group of humans may not include amicable individuals, young elephants who can no longer live with their mothers are not guaranteed a welcoming new home.
"This isn’t always straightforward, and often older males aren’t so interested in dealing with these socially needy young males," O'Connell-Rodwell said. "But a few of the older, social bulls like Kirk, Shaka and Kelly do have an interest in taking these young males under their wing. And a clear sign of this intention is to invite the younger males to follow them when they leave the waterhole." That is where the "low rumble" signaling "let's go" comes into play.
"The invitation takes the form of a 'let’s go' rumble, the same vocalizations that dominant females use to coordinate the departure of a large family," O'Connell-Rodwell said. "The initial rumble is responded to in a highly coordinated, synchronized fashion, where each individual contributes their say in the form of a barbers quartet."
By establishing that male elephants literally tell each other when and how to leave certain locations, O'Connell-Rodwell and her team contributed a new and important finding to the field of elephant research.
"Male elephants use vocal coordination to trigger action within tightly bonded groups," O'Connell-Rodwell said. "This has never been documented and has a number of implications for a much richer male elephant society than previously thought."
The PeerJ study on male elephants comes on the heels of a long string of research shedding light into elephant intelligence. A June study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution revealed that elephants have distinct sounds to refer to specific individuals, essentially an analogue for human names. Using AI technology to decipher elephant communications, the scientists explained that their machine could translate elephants calls based on their "acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver’s vocalizations. Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls originally addressed to them relative to calls addressed to a different individual."
Similarly, a study published in May in the journal Communications Biology found that elephants form complex "sentences" through their various rumbles, ear flags, trunk rubbings and other actions. When elephants release sex pheromones, start randomly tooting or begin rubbing against each other, this is not chaotic or random behavior.
"We also found that elephants greet by appropriately targeting visual, acoustic and tactile gestures at their audience depending on the audience's state of visual attention," Vesta Eleuteri, a PhD student at the University of Vienna's Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology, told Salon at the time. "For example, if we're in a noisy bar and I want to tell you 'let's leave' and you are looking at me, I might use a visual gesture, but if you are not, I might touch you. The ability to target visual gestures was previously shown from captive elephants towards a human. So finding this capacity between elephants, although quite expected for people who know elephants, was also novel."
O'Connell-Rodwell's research also underscored the rich inner lives led by elephants.
"Elephants have individual characters and intentions, and they coordinate their 'voices' in a way that is suggestive of individual expression of art and music, and perhaps even whimsy," O'Connell-Rodwell said. "But I may be showing my hand here regarding the results of our follow-up paper so perhaps I shouldn’t elaborate at this time, and focus on the results at hand. Male elephant society is steeped in ritual." O'Connell-Rodwell unpacked this in greater depth in her book "Elephant Don," and urges elephant conservationists to focus on protecting these elderly bulls.
"Mentorship is critical for young male elephants, and they depend on those few elders and young adults that are so inclined to take them under their wing and look after their wellbeing both physically and psychologically," O'Connell-Rodwell said.
