How Elephants Say 'Hello'? Flapping Ears and Rumbly Noises
How do elephants say 'hello'? Flapping their ears and making rumbly noises are the fascinating ways elephants greet their friends. In this video, we explore the unique communication methods of elephants, revealing why they flap their ears and produce low-frequency rumbles. Elephants are highly social animals with complex interactions, and their greetings are an essential part of their social structure. Discover the science behind these behaviors, the significance of these gestures in elephant society, and enjoy some amazing footage of elephants in the wild demonstrating these friendly greetings. Whether you are an animal lover, a student, or just curious about wildlife, this video provides an insightful look into the world of elephants.
Elephants say 'hello' to friends by flapping their ears and making little rumbly noises
Elephants use ear flaps, rumbles, trunk reaches, and other gestures to greet peers, new research suggests. Two elephant calves touching trunks. Elephants use various gestures, sounds, and visual cues to communicate, new research shows.
When elephants reunite with friends, they greet with ear flaps, rumbles, and other deliberate sounds and gestures, new research shows.
The study, published May 9 in Communications Biology, suggests elephants communicate intentionally and adjust their greetings based on what others are doing. For example, when another elephant is already paying attention, elephants use visual gestures. Otherwise, they use touch.
"For me, it was really exciting to finally understand how they use their bodies to communicate," study lead author Vesta Eleuteri, a graduate student at the University of Vienna, told Live Science. "It's mind-blowing that they rely on it so much, but it's so overlooked."
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'They are very well aware of their agency': Elephant calf burial ritual discovered in India Scientists already knew that elephants communicate from miles away using deep rumbles too low for humans to hear but easily picked up by elephants' large ears. Their long trunks have a great sense of smell, allowing them to detect age, kinship, and social groups in both elephants and people. However, their eyesight is relatively poor compared to humans.
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Previous elephant communication research focused on sound and smell separately, Eleuteri said, rather than how these and other senses work together.
Eleuteri and her team took a different approach, counting visual gestures — such as ear flapping and trunk reaching — along with vocalizations, touches, and scent-related behaviors. They tracked which gestures and sounds occurred together, noting that low rumbles often accompanied ear flapping. This combination was the most common greeting they documented. The recurring combination suggested the elephants wanted to communicate, Eleuteri said. The elephants also usually looked at each other before gesturing, further reinforcing that idea.
"This paper is unique in how seriously it tackles the concept of multi-modal communication," meaning communication that involves multiple senses at once, said Robbie Ball, who studies comparative cognition at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and was not involved in the study.
"Just like I might wave my hand and yell 'Hey!' at my friend across the street, elephants appear to combine appropriate communication signals when greeting their friends," Ball told Live Science.
For years, researchers documented various greeting behaviors when groups of elephants came together. It wasn't clear which behaviors were intentional communication and which were unthinking. To answer that question, researchers in the new study worked with nine semi-wild elephants in Zimbabwe. They separated them for 10 minutes and then brought them back together to observe their greetings.
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they used a proxy for elephant friendship
Elephants tend to greet only those they know and like, so an important first step was figuring out which elephants in the group were close. Elephant caretakers already had some sense of the elephants' social dynamics. To quantify them, they used a proxy for elephant friendship the "nearest neighbor index." Twice a month, elephant carers checked which elephants stood closest to each other. They chose to study six elephants that were closely bonded.
The study emphasizes that elephants live in complex social worlds, with family groups separating, coming together, and keeping track of relationships over time.
"They have long lives like humans. They can live up to 70 years and have a similar trajectory," Eleuteri said. She suggested that having many social partners could push animals to develop complex communication.
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