Elephants Use Feces to Say Hello

Scientists have discovered the strange way that African elephants like to communicate with each other: by defecating.

The new study, published in Communications Biology by researchers at the University of Vienna, discovered that the gentle giants used urination, defecation and secretions from sweat glands to greet each other in 71 percent of cases. This finding strongly suggests that smell plays a part in how the animals greet one another.

"The urine and feces of elephants contain chemical information important for elephants, like the identity of the individual, their reproductive state, or even their emotional state," Vesta Eleuteri, corresponding author and elephant researcher and monitor at the University of Vienna, told Newsweek.

"Elephants often investigate other elephants' genitals or their secretions with their trunks and, in particular, do this when they meet, probably to be updated on what's going on with others. Elephants might defecate or urinate during greetings to release this important information. Another option is that they do this due to the excitement of seeing each other."

The scientists also discovered that elephants used other gestures such as flapping their large ears or trumpeting from their trunks, in greeting.

"But the fact that often the elephants moved their tails to the side or waggled their tails when urinating and defecating suggests they may be inviting the recipients to smell them. Maybe they don't need to tell each other how they're doing, as they can smell it," Eleuteri said.

Scientists already know that African elephants are highly intelligent and capable of emotions and social mannerisms. Previous research has already found that they greet each other with vocalizations and other gestures. However, until now, researchers were not sure whether these physical actions were deliberately used for greetings or how the animals combined them with noises.

To reach these new findings, Eleuteri, along with fellow University of Vienna researcher Angela Stoeger and colleagues, studied the vocalizations and physical gestures of nine elephants living in Zimbabwe's Jafuta Reserve between November and December 2021.

In total, they analyzed 89 "greeting events," including 1,014 physical gestures and 268 vocalizations.

They not only discovered that elephants created scent in 71 percent of cases, but they also found that the elephants used a combination of noises and gestures to greet others. Ear flapping and ear spreading were more obvious physical signs of greeting, while more subtle gestures, such as tail raising were also observed.

Combinations of ear flapping and rumbling noises were the most common, the study authors report, but usually only between males and females.

The type of greeting also appeared to change depending on whether the elephant being greeted was looking at them. When the subject was looking at them, elephants were far more likely to use visual gestures such as area spreading and trunk swinging. However, when they were not being watched, they were more likely to make a sound.

"Hearing and smell are known to be very important for elephants, while there is the common belief that elephants don't rely as much on vision. Nonetheless, there are reports of elephants using many conspicuous visual or tactile body actions in different social contexts, suggesting that they actually rely a lot on vision and even touch," Eleuteri said.

"But, up to now, nobody had actually systematically explored if and which of these
actions are gestures deliberately used between elephants for communication."

Eleuteri said that the study "provides evidence" that elephants target gestures at each other.

"Because we found the same greeting signals previously described in elephants in the wild, we think that the greeting repertoire may be the same in all elephants," Eleuteri said.

This discovery is similar to those made in chimpanzees and other apes, who also appear to combine vocalizations and other gestures in greeting. The authors believe that these communication methods may have manifested in the animals independently from other species.

"Our next steps are to study how flexible elephants are when they gesture: do they use different gestures to explain themselves better or insist with the same gestures when they don't get what they want? At a larger scale, our aims are to understand what is the gestural repertoire of wild elephants (do they gesture by flapping their ears, flinging
their trunks, and waggling their tails?) and what are the meaning of their gestures, basically what they're telling each other. They might be saying: 'Come here,' 'move away,' or maybe even 'smell me,'" Eleuteri said.

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