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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/winterstl on 2024-06-10 18:25:54+00:00.
Elephants call each other by name, study finds
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/10/elephant-names-study-ai
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested.
For the new study published on Monday, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savanna elephants in Kenya.
Elephant make a wide range of sounds, from loud trumpeting to rumbles so low they cannot be heard by the human ear.
The most common call was “a harmonically rich, low-frequency sound”, according to the study in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
This suggests that elephants and humans are the only two animals known to invent “arbitrary” names for each other, rather than merely copying the sound of the recipient.
“The evidence provided here that elephants use non-imitative sounds to label others indicates they have the ability for abstract thought,” the senior study author George Wittemyer said.
The original article contains 489 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!