Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
When elephants communicate with each other, they mainly do so through sounds and smells. Fitting, given their massive, flapping ears and long trunks.
They also use visual displays and gestures.
Previous research has shown that African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) can recognise when humans are looking at them based on the orientation of the person’s face and body.
Now, a team from Japan’s Kyoto University have shown that the same is true for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) which diverged from their African cousins about 5 to 7 million of years ago.
The food-requesting experiment involved 10 captive female elephants in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand.
Researchers recorded how often each elephant directed food-requesting gestures towards an experimenter who stood with both her face and body in 1 of 4 positions: both toward the animal or away from it, or with only the face or body towards it.
They also noted the elephant’s behaviours when the experimenter was absent.
“The lack of significant differences between the 2 ‘body away’ conditions and the ‘not present’ condition suggests that elephants did not gesture more simply due to the presence of a human,” write the authors of the study published in Scientific Reports.
Instead, they suggest that elephants are specifically attuned to visual attentional cues.
“We found that elephants gestured most when both the experimenter’s body and face were oriented towards them … They were not sensitive to human face or body orientation in isolation; face orientation alone had no effect, and body orientation only influenced gesturing when the face was also oriented towards the elephant,” they add.
“It is possible that human faces are too morphologically different from elephant faces for elephants to perceive human attentional states.
“It is possible that body orientation is inherently a more salient visual cue, as the larger surface area of the body likely makes it easier to detect from a distance, especially given elephants’ relatively poor visual acuity.”
The study adds to understanding of elephant cognition and visual attention in non-humans. The researchers now plan to study other aspects of Asian elephant cognition, such as cooperation, pro-sociality and delayed gratification.