ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024
African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Language-like properties in the vocal behavior of animals.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Monitoring Zoo Elephant Rumble Activity Using Combined Seismic and Acoustic Data.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Name use by companion parrots.PloS one · 2026Article
- Leveraging artificial intelligence in bioacoustics for animal health monitoring and early diagnosis in veterinary medicine.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Review
- Impacts of Tourism on Wild Elephant Behavior in a Protected Area: Thresholds for Sustainable Wildlife Viewing.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Vocal convergence during formation of social relationships in vampire bats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- From Human Child to Grey Parrot: Exploring a Common Model of Word Meaning Extension Across Species.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Diverse and flexible strategies enable successful cooperation in marmoset dyads.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Article
- Animal Welfare, Agency, and Animal-Computer Interaction.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Integrative neural mechanisms for social communication of learned vocal behavior.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2025Review
- A multidimensional approach to the self in non-human animals through the Pattern Theory of Self.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Looking back on 2024.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- AI decodes the calls of the wild.Nature · 2024Article
- Female African elephant rumbles differ between populations and sympatric social groups.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Personal names are a universal feature of human language, yet few analogues exist in other species. While dolphins and parrots address conspecifics by imitating the calls of the addressee, human names are not imitations of the sounds typically made by the named individual. Labelling objects or individuals without relying on imitation of the sounds made by the referent radically expands the expressive power of language. Thus, if non-imitative name analogues were found in other species, this could have important implications for our understanding of language evolution. Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver. We used machine learning to demonstrate that the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call's acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver's vocalizations. Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls originally addressed to them relative to calls addressed to a different individual. Our findings offer evidence for individual addressing of conspecifics in elephants. They further suggest that, unlike other non-human animals, elephants probably do not rely on imitation of the receiver's calls to address one another.
Indexed as
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38858512What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.