Discovered how African elephants greet each other: the way changes depending on who you’re talking to

There is the formal greeting, the more formal or courteous one. There is a greeting of joy and surprise, complete with handshakes and hugs that celebrate the long-awaited reunion. Then there is the greeting of affection, made up of kisses and cuddles, which is reserved for few. Just like us humans, African elephants can also change the way they greet each other depending on whether the other elephant is looking at them or not, whether they have a social or parental bond, whether or not they are happy to meet each other. And they have a whole series of uses and formalities that are very reminiscent of ours, made up of vocalizations, physical actions, movements of ears and trunks. But they also have an unusual custom: after the first greeting, they begin to do their business together, mixing their smells and thus sealing the reunion.

African elephants are known for their extraordinary memory. This is because they have evolved to remember a number of details that are critical to their survival. For example, they memorize the sounds and smells of their past predators, retrace their steps exactly to find waterholes in the arid savannah, and distinguish members of their family among hundreds of other elephants. And this also allows them to remember who their friends are and who are not. Now, based on a new study of nine specimens published in Nature Communications Biology, we know that “elephants use different combinations of gestures such as ear flapping and vocalizations in their greetings, which can promote individual recognition and social bonding.” But the most curious thing, at least in our eyes, is undoubtedly that of the simultaneous discharge of urine or feces, which occurs at least twice out of three encounters.

Vesta Eleuteri, Angela Stoeger and colleagues at the University of Vienna studied the vocalizations and physical actions used during greetings by elephants living in the Jafuta reserve in Zimbabwe, observing 89 events consisting of 1,282 greeting behaviors, of which 1,014 were actions and 268 were vocalizations. “We found that the elephants greeted each other with specific combinations of vocalizations and gestures, such as rumbling with flapping or opening their ears, as well as other seemingly less deliberate physical movements, such as raising their tails and wagging,” explains Professor Eleuteri.

“The combination of rumbling and flapping was the most common form of greeting, although it was used more frequently among females than among males,” while “71% of the greetings they recorded were combined with urination and defecation”: a percentage of cases too high to be just a case due to a common need, strengthened by the fact that “the production of urine and feces is combined with the secretions of a sweat gland characteristic of elephants, known as the temporal gland. Which suggests that the Smell can play a very important role in greetings and recognition.”

Photo credits: Vesta Eleuteri

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