Study explores elephant greetings and how they change depending on social relationships

How do elephants greet?

As it happens, researchers are learning more about how animals greet each other and how relationships between social species might affect that communication.

African elephants use different combinations of gestures and vocalizations in their greetings, such as ear flapping and vocalizations, behavior that can promote individual recognition and social bonds, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.

The study, which monitored the vocalizations and physical actions of nine semi-captive elephants living in a savanna within the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe, also found that elephants can change the way they greet each other depending on whether the other elephant is looking at them.

When observed by other elephants, they were more likely to use visual gestures to communicate, such as opening their ears, reaching or swinging their trunks, the researchers found. When they were not being observed, the elephants were more likely to touch the recipient of their greeting with their trunk, or to use gestures that produced a sound, such as flapping their ears and tapping their ears on their necks.

“If you’re not looking at me, I could use a touch gesture. I could touch you to tell you something,” said Vesta Eleuteri, a researcher at the University of Vienna who studies communication in African savanna elephants and lead author of the study. ABC News.

When studying social groups of elephants, the human observer can often determine relationships between elephants based on how they greet each other, Eleuteri said. These relationships can include females with their young, and even two different families that have formed a bonding group, he said.

“Often when they meet each other, they are so excited that they rumble, trumpet, roar and just gang up to strengthen this relationship,” Eleuteri said.

Males, on the other hand, tend to use more “investigative” greetings, such as directing their trunk toward the mouth or toward the temporal glands of other males, located halfway between the eye and the ear, to cautiously mediate their reunion, Eleuteri said. .

“It’s riskier among men because of greater competition,” he said.

Between November and December 2021, researchers observed 89 elephant greeting events that consisted of 1,282 greeting behaviors, 1,014 of which were physical actions and the rest were vocalizations, according to the article.

The observations revealed that the elephants greeted each other with specific combinations of vocalizations and gestures, such as flapping noises or opening their ears, as well as other seemingly less deliberate physical movements, such as raising their tails and wagging, according to the study. .

While previous research has reported that elephants often engage in greeting rituals involving vocalizations and physical actions, it is unclear whether these physical actions were deliberate gestures used for communication. It was also unclear how gestures and vocalizations are combined during greetings, the researchers said.

“This is a first step in understanding the ways in which elephants communicate with sight and touch,” Eleuteri said. “There were descriptions of them using different body movements, but we didn’t really know if they were really communicative.”

Most previous research on mammalian communication has focused on chimpanzees and other apes. The lack of existing research on elephant communication inspired Eleuteri to embark on the study. After witnessing elephants interacting in the wild, he became convinced that the gestures they used were intentional, he said, adding that greetings in the wild are “very elaborate.”

“If you spend time with elephants, you can even tell when they communicate with you,” he said.