ELEPHANTS never forget—or at least, they don’t forget their friends.
Research from Kenya shows that they can recognise the calls of over 100
individuals, even after several years apart.
Female African elephants have complex social networks and communicate via
low-pitched “contact calls”. “This is the call that says: `This is me,'” says
behavioural ecologist Karen McComb from the University of Sussex. She and her
colleagues recorded the contact calls of elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National
Park. After noting which elephants met often and which were strangers, they
played the calls back to 27 families to see what they…
