Reacción a "African elephants address each other with name-like calls, study finds African elephants address each other with name-like calls, study finds"

In my opinion, this is a fascinating study and another example of the recent advances in our understanding of communication in other species thanks to the use of machine learning.  

We know very little about communication in other species and this (among other reasons) is because we are not sensitive to the many subtleties that the vocalisations of other species may contain. They are simply beyond our capabilities. This is why machine learning is proving so important: it allows us to highlight differences and similarities that we would otherwise never be able to distinguish.  

In this case we have a surprising discovery that, despite being nearly 100 million years apart, elephants use something similar to the names by which we recognise ourselves in society. We already knew something like this in other deeply social species capable of vocal learning, such as dolphins and parrots, but elephants use these ‘names’ more closely to the way we do.  

Dolphins use special ‘signature’ whistles and parrots use what are known as ‘contact calls’ (which to our ear often sound like a piercing cry). Both have similar functions to our names, but also important differences. Both dolphins and parrots repeat their own ‘name’ when communicating, and this becomes in a way their hallmark. Thus, when one individual wants to attract the attention of another, what they do is to imitate the ‘name’ that the other uses in their messages. So, yes, they have a similar function to our names, but they are also based on imitating the sounds of others.  

In contrast, elephants seem to be doing something different and more like what we humans do. The vocalisations that elephants use to refer to another individual are not based on imitating the vocalisations of that other elephant; they are sounds that can be considered arbitrary. They refer to that individual and no one else, but they are inventions that, according to the authors, have a symbolic function similar to that of any of our human names.  

The authors have been able to demonstrate that elephants attend and respond (either by vocalising, approaching or both) to these vocalisations referring to them and only to them. In addition, the analysis of these vocalisations has left some very interesting questions, as it is not entirely clear whether elephants in the same family call each member of the family by the same name, or whether each elephant may have several different ‘names’. It also remains to be known what other information these messages may contain, whether they may refer to individuals who are not present, and other interesting aspects such as the origin of these ‘names’. We have good clues to support their symbolic nature, but who invents them, and at what point in time do they do so? In dolphins and parrots the ‘names’ of each individual are modified sounds of those they use in their family, but here this does not seem to be the case.  

In short, this is an extremely interesting discovery which, as it could not be otherwise in a field in which we still have so much to know, leaves more questions open than it answers, and that is fascinating.