AI Tool Finds That Elephants Have Individual Names For Each Other
So cool!
By Sukhbir Cheema — 26 Jun 2024, 04:09 PM
A new study has found that African elephants have individual name-like calls which they use to communicate with each other
The study of over four years in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution, earlier this month.
Researchers also undertook 14 months of fieldwork to track, observe, and record two herds of elephants.
In total, the researchers identified 469 unique calls or "rumbles" from these elephants, which these researchers confirmed were individual names for each other.
The researchers learned that every elephant rumble has a unique identifier that each herd member can recognise, just like how we humans recognise unique sounds to identify each other
Behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University, George Wittemyer, who was among the researchers involved in the study, told Al Jazeera that elephants have a sophisticated social network which is rich, nuanced, and complex.
The study observed that the elephants used a call-and-response system of communication. A female leader of the herd, the matriarch, would make a rumble and the call would be responded to by an individual within the herd. The matriarch would then make a similar rumble, to which another individual elephant would respond and hurry back to the herd.
"And so in those cases, it's just so obvious to the observer, to us on the ground, that something happened there that everybody in the group knew. The call was directed towards this other individual. That individual received and perceived that as well, responded and came to the group. And so you’re wondering, 'are they using names?'" Wittemyer explained.
The elephants were observed and listened to using a machine learning software called Elephant Voices, the first artificial intelligence (AI) experiment of its kind with elephants
Some of the elephant rumbles were too low for a human ear to hear so special recording equipment was used.
The recordings of the rumbles were then fed to a specialist AI learning software, which analysed them and discovered that unique names were assigned to specific elephants within the rumbles.
To test their findings, the researchers played the "name" of the elephant as a rumble from a speaker and an individual would respond by walking towards the speaker and rumbling back, its head raised, ears flapping. If a different rumble is played, the elephant might pick its head but wouldn't interact with the speaker.
That said, the study agreed that more research needs to be done to understand better how elephants communicate. But still, it's cool to know that we humans are not the only ones who have names for each other. The fact that elephants have individual names for their fellow mates could help us in further understanding the evolution of language.
