14 DAY TRIAL // A new scientific study has revealed that elephants are apparently capable of discerning between various human voices and figure out whether or not a particular individual poses any threat to them or wants to do them harm. This is one of the first instances in the animal world where such a trait is discovered.
What researchers at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, discovered in their new study is that elephants appear to be aware of the fact that not all humans pose a threat to them. This is important, because we are one of the very limited numbers of species capable of taking down an elephant.
According to the group, the pachyderms use a combination of scent and sight to distinguish between native African populations, which have a rich history of attacking these animals for various reasons, and other groups, with which they never had any quarrels. The creatures appear capable of discerning this difference even between sentences and words spoken in local tongues, the team now argues.
In a series of experiments, Sussex biologists Graeme Shannon and Karen McComb recorded voices of two different groups in Kenya. The first man was from the semi-nomadic Maasai group, which regularly kills elephants for a number of reasons. The second man was from the Kemba group, which is largely agricultural in nature and does not get into violence with the large animals.
A man from each group calmly said “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming,” each in their native tongue. The researchers then took these recordings and played them back to 47 African elephant (Loxodonta africana) family groups, hosted at the Amboseli National Park, also in Kenya.
The differences in reactions were astounding. Upon hearing the Maasai man speaking, the elephants were very likely to start sniffing the air in concern, and to bunch up together for added defense capabilities. Conversely, when the Kimba man spoke, no such reaction was recorded. The team says that elephants were twice as likely to huddle up together when hearing the Maasai recordings.
“We knew elephants could distinguish the Maasai and Kamba by their clothes and smells, but that they can also do so by their voices alone is really interesting,” comments University of Oxford zoologist Fritz Vollrath, quoted by Nature News.
The team then recorded the voices of women and boys from the two groups, as they were saying the same thing. Elephant families were overall less likely to take defensive positions, but they did bunch up more upon hearing the Maasai women and children speaking. Even more interesting was the fact that groups led by older matriarch elephants did not retreat upon hearing the boys talk.
On the other hand, groups led by matriarchs younger than 42 did retreat around 40 percent of the time, suggesting that leaders of elephant groups pick up experience as they go along, and learn to differentiate between ages, gender, and intentions in the humans they come across.
“Even though spearings by Maasai have declined in recent years, it’s still obvious that fear of them is high. This is likely down to younger elephants following the lead of their matriarchs who remember spearings from long ago,” McComb concludes.