Function of Trunk-Mediated “Greeting” Behaviours between Male African Elephants: Insights from Choice of Partners

Allen, Connie R. B.; Croft, Darren P.; Testard, Camille; Brent, Lauren J. N.

doi:10.3390/ani11092718

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 63 publications

(131 reference statements)

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“…In particular, saliva may be a potentially rich source of pheromones (or hormones functionally serving as pheromones), as has been observed in other mammals [100][101][102]. The existence of salivary pheromones could explain trunk-to-mouth exchanges frequently observed between elephants [103,104]. Elephants also exhibit a variety of chemosensory behaviors when examining a dead conspecific, although we have little understanding of what information they might be gathering [86,[105][106][107].…”

Section: Intraspecific Chemical Signaling and Capabilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Chemical Ecology of Elephants: 21st Century Additions to Our Understanding and Future Outlooks

Schulte

LaDue

2021

Animals

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Chemical signals are the oldest and most ubiquitous means of mediating intra- and interspecific interactions. The three extant species of elephants, the Asian elephant and the two African species, savanna and forest share sociobiological patterns in which chemical signals play a vital role. Elephants emit secretions and excretions and display behaviors that reveal the importance of odors in their interactions. In this review, we begin with a brief introduction of research in elephant chemical ecology leading up to the 21st century, and then we summarize the body of work that has built upon it and occurred in the last c. 20 years. The 21st century has expanded our understanding on elephant chemical ecology, revealing their use of odors to detect potential threats and make dietary choices. Furthermore, complementary in situ and ex situ studies have allowed the careful observations of captive elephants to be extended to fieldwork involving their wild counterparts. While important advances have been made in the 21st century, further work should investigate the roles of chemical signaling in elephants and how these signals interact with other sensory modalities. All three elephant species are threatened with extinction, and we suggest that chemical ecology can be applied for targeted conservation efforts.

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Section: Intraspecific Chemical Signaling and Capabilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Chemical Ecology of Elephants: 21st Century Additions to Our Understanding and Future Outlooks

Schulte

LaDue

2021

Animals

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Vocal-visual combinations in wild chimpanzees

Mine,

Wilke,

Zulberti

et al. 2024

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Living organisms throughout the animal kingdom habitually communicate with multi-modal signals that use multiple sensory channels. Such composite signals vary in their communicative function, as well as the extent to which they are recombined freely. Humans typically display complex forms of multi-modal communication, yet the evolution of this capacity remains unknown. One of our two closest living relatives, chimpanzees, also produce multi-modal combinations and therefore may offer a valuable window into the evolutionary roots of human communication. However, a currently neglected step in describing multi-modal systems is to disentangle non-random combinations from those that occur simply by chance. Here we aimed to provide a systematic quantification of communicative behaviour in our closest living relatives, describing non-random combinations produced across auditory and visual modalities. Through recording the behaviour of wild chimpanzees from the Kibale forest, Uganda we generated the first repertoire of non-random combined vocal and visual components. Using collocation analysis, we identified more than 100 vocal-visual combinations which occurred more frequently than expected by chance. We also probed how multi-modal production varied in the population, finding no differences in the number of visual components produced with vocalisations as a function of age, sex or rank. As expected, chimpanzees produced more visual components alongside vocalizations during longer vocalization bouts, however, this was only the case for some vocalization types, not others. We demonstrate that chimpanzees produce a vast array of combined vocal and visual components, exhibiting a hitherto underappreciated level of multi-modal complexity.

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Multimodal communication and audience directedness in the greeting behaviour of semi-captive African savannah elephants

Eleuteri,

Bates,

Rendle-Worthington

et al. 2024

Commun Biol

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Many species communicate by combining signals into multimodal combinations. Elephants live in multi-level societies where individuals regularly separate and reunite. Upon reunion, elephants often engage in elaborate greeting rituals, where they use vocalisations and body acts produced with different body parts and of various sensory modalities (e.g., audible, tactile). However, whether these body acts represent communicative gestures and whether elephants combine vocalisations and gestures during greeting is still unknown. Here we use separation-reunion events to explore the greeting behaviour of semi-captive elephants (Loxodonta africana). We investigate whether elephants use silent-visual, audible, and tactile gestures directing them at their audience based on their state of visual attention and how they combine these gestures with vocalisations during greeting. We show that elephants select gesture modality appropriately according to their audience’s visual attention, suggesting evidence of first-order intentional communicative use. We further show that elephants integrate vocalisations and gestures into different combinations and orders. The most frequent combination consists of rumble vocalisations with ear-flapping gestures, used most often between females. By showing that a species evolutionarily distant to our own primate lineage shows sensitivity to their audience’s visual attention in their gesturing and combines gestures with vocalisations, our study advances our understanding of the emergence of first-order intentionality and multimodal communication across taxa.

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Function of Trunk-Mediated “Greeting” Behaviours between Male African Elephants: Insights from Choice of Partners

Cited by 3 publications

References 63 publications

The Chemical Ecology of Elephants: 21st Century Additions to Our Understanding and Future Outlooks

The Chemical Ecology of Elephants: 21st Century Additions to Our Understanding and Future Outlooks

Vocal-visual combinations in wild chimpanzees

Multimodal communication and audience directedness in the greeting behaviour of semi-captive African savannah elephants

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