Elephants use gestures and vocal cues when greeting each other, study reports
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A team of animal behaviorists from the University of Vienna, the University of Portsmouth, Elephant CREW, Jafuta Reserve and the University of St Andrews has found that elephants use gestures and vocal cues when they greet one another.
In their study, published in the journal Communications Biology, the group observed a month's worth of greetings between African elephants living in the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe in 2021.
Prior research has shown that elephants are highly intelligent, ranking close to dolphins. They also have complex matriarchal social structures. For this new study, the research team wondered if elephants have ways to communicate with one another that had not been observed during prior research efforts. They embarked on an observational study focused on elephant greetings.
The researchers ventured into the field at the reserve in Zimbabwe and watched and recorded encounters between elephants for one month in 2021. They observed 1,014 physical actions taken by elephants engaged in a greeting and 268 vocalizations.
