Elephants never forget
African elephants are listening to us. The pachyderms can tell certain human languages apart and even determine our gender, relative age, and whether we’re a threat, according to a new study. The work illustrates how elephants can sometimes protect themselves from human actions. “It is a most remarkable finding,” says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University. “Animals associating sounds with danger is nothing new—but making these fine distinctions in human voices is quite remarkable.” It has long been known that elephants flee when they encounter Maasai men wearing their distinctive red robes—yet they are far less bothered by other people on foot. Indeed, other studies have shown that the animals even distinguish between the color and scent of clothing worn by Maasai hunters and Kamba men, farmers who live in the same area but don’t threaten the animals. Some elephants even have human friends as in the video below.
Colleagues wondered if the Amboseli elephants could make similar distinctions between the voices of the Maasai and Kamba people. The scientists recorded men from the two ethnic groups, as well as Maasai women and boys, saying “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming” in their respective languages. Right “from the get-go, the elephants responded differently to the Maasai and Kamba male voices,” says study co-author Graeme Shannon, a behavioral ecologist at Colorado State University. They were more likely to retreat and bunch together, forming a defensive fortress around their young, and to smell the air (raising their trunks skyward) if they heard an adult Maasai man speak. But their reaction was not nearly as defensive when the voice was that of a male Kamba. The animals were also much less fearful when presented with the voices of Maasai women or boys. The scientists also altered the recordings, making the adult male voices sound more female and vice versa. But the elephants weren’t fooled. But they still like birthday parties as evidenced in the second video below.
“Cognitively, they know what they’re doing, and they adjust their reaction to exactly what they’re hearing.” In a previous playback experiment, she and her colleagues showed that elephants will often come aggressively toward the loudspeaker when they hear lions (their other predator) roaring, apparently to drive them off. But when the elephants heard the adult Maasai male voices, they never showed this mobbing behavior, and instead formed a defensive bunch and retreated stealthily. “This study is one more confirmation of just how intelligent and flexible elephants are,” says Joyce Poole, an expert with “Elephant Voices.” “I routinely tell the Maasai I work with that the elephants are studying us more carefully than we are studying them. The trouble is elephants are too smart to be fooled by us for long.”
Ele-funnies
What do you get when you mix an elephant with a rhino?
Hellifiknow.
What’s the difference between an Indian and an African elephant?
One’s an elephant.
What do you call an elephant that doesn’t matter?
An Irrelephant.
What recipe uses chicken and elephant parts?
Chicken Dumbo.
April 27th Birthdays
1959 – Sheena Easton, 1986 – Jenna Coleman, 1969 – Maria Carey and Pauley Perrette
1932 – Casey Kasem, 1916 – Enos Slaughter, 1737 – Edward Gibbon, 1922 – Jack Klugman