Elephant's Use Names

Many kinds of Elephants are nearing extinction due to poaching for their ivory tusks and habitat loss from development. But what difference would it make if there was a way to communicate with these endangered animals? We’ll explore new insights into Elephant cognition in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s “Discovery Files”.
The blast of trumpeting Elephants might be their most famous sound, but they also make lower-pitched rumbling sounds that are used in a wide variety of social situations.
In a new study, researchers at Colorado State University, supported in part by NSF, found that wild elephants seem to use the distinctive rumbling sounds to address each other and that the sounds may be individual names.
Hundreds of calls recorded between 1986 and 2022 representing known African savanna elephants were analyzed with a random forest AI model. The researchers then played calls addressed to 17 specific elephants and found that they reacted faster to the calls known to be directed to them compared to other kinds of calls, even ones coming from the same source elephant.
The results show that the elephants create different kinds of calls for different situations and can recognize the calls directed to them.
More research using larger datasets will be needed to determine just what part of these calls are specifically names, but these new insights into recognition and individual-specific communication expand our understanding of these majestic animals and strengthen the case for Elephant conservation.