Male African elephants discriminate and prefer vocalizations of unfamiliar females

Abstract

Gaining information about conspecifics via long-distance vocalizations is crucial for social and spatially flexible species such as the African elephant (Loxodonta africana). Female elephants are known to discriminate individuals and kin based on acoustic cues. Specifically, females approached the loudspeaker exclusively with playbacks of familiar individuals with high association indexes, intentionally fusing with their affiliates. For males, which are less bonded, gathering social information via vocalizations could still have important implications, but little is known about their vocal discrimination skills. We experimentally tested the ability of male African elephants to discriminate the social rumbles of familiar (from the same population) versus unfamiliar females. Male elephants discriminated and preferentially moved towards the rumbles of unfamiliar females, showing longer attentive reactions and significantly more orientating (facing and approaching the speaker) behavior. The increased orientating response of males towards playbacks of unfamiliar females is converse to the reaction of female subjects. Our results provide evidence that male elephants extract social information from vocalizations, yet with a different intention than females. Accordingly, males might use social cues in vocalizations to assess mating opportunities, which may involve selection to identify individuals or kin in order to avoid inbreeding.

Field Propagation Experiments of Male African Savanna Elephant Rumbles: A Focus on the Transmission of Formant Frequencies

“…Previous research using playback experiments demonstrated that savanna elephant rumbles encode acoustic information about sex, reproductive state, and even social identity [ 38 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ]. Savanna elephants are capable of not only recognizing rumbles of other family and bond group members within their population but also of discriminating calls from conspecifics they encountered more or less frequently [ 71 ].…”

The African Elephant (<i>Loxodonta africana</i>): Mini-Review of an Endangered Species

“…Through the rumbles (low-frequency calls), it is possible to identify the sex of the vocalizing elephant; characteristics like vocal tract resonant frequencies are associated with the size of the individual, but the sexual differences detected in the social rumbles are not entirely related to the sexual size dimorphism [95]. It is not only the distinction of gender that is possible through acoustic signals; female elephants recognize individuals and their relatives through vocalization and produce specific sounds (like loudspeaker) only in the presence of individuals whom they share strong ties [96]. In turn, males are also able to do this identification, but the response to the situation is different: instead of connecting more with familiar voices, they tend to move away from them and move towards unknown females-this behaviour can happen with the aim to prevent inbreeding [96].…”

(Under)water love—linking mate choice and cognition in fish and frogs

“…2005; Deecke 2006; Börner et al. 2016; Stoeger and Baotic 2017). It is known, however, that several species generate a large number of different acoustic signals that allow individuals to flexibly convey information in different contexts with a large vocal repertoire (e.g., Bradbury and Vehrenkamp 2011).…”