Just like us humans, elephants greet each other when they meet each other. Their various greeting rituals are significantly more complex and sophisticated than previously assumed, as biologists have now observed in Zimbabwe. According to this, the pachyderms adapt the way they greet each other, for example, depending on whether the person they are talking to is looking directly at them or not.
Elephants are intelligent and highly social animals. They form close relationships with other members of the herd, mourn dead members of their species, and have even been observed seemingly comforting one another. It is therefore not surprising that the pachyderms greet their familiars warmly, just like we do, when they run into them. These greetings include certain gestures such as ear wagging as well as various sounds.
Hello, hello among pachyderms
But the way one elephant greets another apparently has a lot more system than expected, as biologists working with Vesta Eleuteri from the University of Vienna have now discovered. To learn more about the intricacies of pachyderm “moin moins,” the team observed nine African elephants (Loxodonta africana) performing a total of 89 different greetings in a reserve in Zimbabwe. Eleuteri and her colleagues documented exactly which gestures and sounds were used. In total, they were able to record around 1,300 greeting behaviors, most of which consisted of physical actions such as ear wagging and tail raising.
The elephants most often greeted each other by placing their ears on the sides of their heads and making a deep rumble, the team reports. At the same time, smell apparently also played an important role: During 71 percent of the greetings, Eleuteri and her colleagues were able to observe at least one of the animals urinating, defecating or secreting a secretion from its temporal gland. The team suspects that the pheromones contained in the excretions probably convey additional information to the other person. Ear wagging and tail wagging could in turn help the elephants to reliably convey their olfactory messages.
Eye contact is an important factor
Also astonishing: How two elephants greet each other apparently depends on whether they are making eye contact or not. “When their partner is watching them, elephants stretch or swing their trunks or even extend their ears. However, if there is no eye contact, they touch the other person or use gestures that produce sounds – for example, they fold their ears and thus create a clapping sound,” explains Eleuteri. “Our observations therefore suggest that the elephants can take into account in their communication whether there is eye contact with the greeted elephant or not.”
This means that elephants behave similarly to us humans and also similarly to other intelligent, social animals. Comparable behaviors have already been demonstrated in chimpanzees and other monkeys. They also adjust the way they communicate depending on whether the other person is watching them or not.
Source: University of Vienna; Technical article: Communications Biology, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06133-5