Study Reveals Elephants Use Gestures to Communicate Desires
A recent study shows that elephants can use a variety of gestures to convey their desires, particularly when in the presence of a visually attentive audience. Researchers observed 17 semi-captive African Savannah elephants in Zimbabwe using distinct gestures to communicate their goal of obtaining apples. The findings shed light on the intentional communication abilities of elephants and open avenues for further research into goal-directed communication in highly social species.
Elephants used distinct gesture types to communicate that they want apples. Humans and non-human primates use gestures to convey desires. A recent study showed elephants can use gestures to communicate their desires. The study involved 17 semi-captive African Savannah elephants in Zimbabwe. The elephants displayed clear goal-directed intentionality when gesturing towards an attentive human or the desired object. They showed creativity in developing new gestures when their goals were not met. This behavior suggests goal-directed communication in elephants.
Intentionality in communication distinguishes human language from other animal communication forms. Scientists categorize intentionality into different levels of complexity. Non-human apes have shown first-order intentionality in gestures, but little was known about non-primate behavior. The study observed 38 gesture types and 313 gesture tokens from the elephants. The elephants gestured to communicate their desire for apples only when a visually attentive experimenter was present. They continued gesturing more when their goal was partially met compared to when fully satisfied.
This study highlights goal-directed communication in semi-captive elephants and suggests further research on intentionality in other social species with a large repertoire of signals or gestures.
According to the source: Phys.org.
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