Elephants can and do imitate sounds not typically made by elephants, something only humans were thought to do, say Massachusetts researchers.
Researchers documented two imitative African elephants. One mimicked the sound of trucks on the highway near where it lived. The other imitated the chirps of the Asian elephant it was living with. In both cases the sounds were totally different from the sounds the elephant would normally make or hear from other elephants and were imitated very accurately.
Elephants, like many animals, are believed to use vocal imitation to maintain relationships with other individuals. Learning the sounds of others enables humans and animals to develop signals with shared meanings.
The study was funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and included researchers from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants in Kenya, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Vienna. Results appear in the journal Nature.
© Copyright 2005 by United Press International
