Elephants have names for each other like humans do, study suggests

The big picture: Elephants and primates diverged more than 90 million years ago, but the new findings suggest elephants and humans may communicate in a similar way.

• "Dolphins and parrots call one another by 'name' by imitating the signature call of the addressee," Pardo said in an online statement.
• "By contrast, our data suggest that elephants do not rely on imitation of the receiver's calls to address one another, which is more similar to the way in which human names work."

What they found: Researchers used AI to analyze 469 wild African elephant calls to spot subtle differences between the rumbles.

• They found "individual vocal labels" that elephants on the receiving end recognized and later responded to when the calls were played back to them, wrote the team in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Yes, but: The team couldn't decipher individual elephant names or determine whether elephants "name other things they interact with, like food, water and places," according to the press statement on the study published Monday.

Between the lines: Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, an acoustic biologist at Harvard Medical School, said the findings were a "game-changer," per the New York Times.

• "It's only been recently, with AI and machine learning tools, that this kind of analysis is now possible," said O'Connell-Rodwell, who was not involved in the study.
• Elephant ecologist Chase LaDue told CBC machine learning "offers the potential to better understand the dynamic nature of communication in elephants and other animals."
• Animals "may perceive the world very differently than people do, and so it can be difficult for us to understand what sensory clues are important for animal communication," added LaDue, who wasn't involved in the research.

Go deeper: AI and drones are helping scientists study secrets of elephant behavior