Greetings of Poop? African Elephants Found To Use Feces To Say Hello to Each Other

(Photo : Pexels / Brett Bennett)

African elephants have been discovered by scientists to have a strange way of communication: using defecation and urination.

African Elephants Use Poop, Pee For Communication

The new study, entitled "Multimodal communication and audience directedness in the greeting behaviour of semi-captive African savannah elephants" found that these gentle giants made use of sweat gland secretions, defecation, and urination to greet one another in 71% of cases. Such findings suggest that odor could play a role in how they greet each other.

Vesta Eleuteri, an elephant researcher and monitor from the University of Vienna and a corresponding study author, explains that elephant feces and urine have chemical information that is important for elephants, such as reproductive state, individual identity, and even emotional condition.

Elephants frequently investigate the genitals or secretions of animals with their trunks. They particularly do this as they meet, possibly to become updated with what's happening with others. These giants could end up urinating or defecating during such greetings in order to relay this crucial data. They may also do this out of excitement for seeing one another.

The scientists also found that these gentle giants incorporate other gestures, such as trunk trumpeting and ear flapping, as part of their greetings.

Eleuteri notes that the fact that elephants often wagged or moved their tail to the side as they were defecating or urinating suggests that they could be inviting recipients to smell it. It is possible that they need not inform others of how they are doing, as this can simply be smelled.

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African Elephant Greetings

African elephants are known to be extremely intelligent and capable of distinct social mannerisms and emotions. Earlier research has discovered that they greet one another using certain gestures and vocalizations. However, until now, scientists remained unsure of whether such gestures were used deliberately for greeting purposes or how these were combined by the animals with noises.

Eleuteri, along with researcher Angela Stoeger and other colleagues, examined nine elephants' physical gestures and vocalizations. These giants were from Jafuta Reserve of Zimbabwe. This was performed on November to December 2021.

They examined a total of 89 greeting events. This covers 268 vocalizations and 1,014 physical gestures.

On top of discovering that the elephants produced such smells in 71% of cases, the researchers also discovered that the elephants made use of a mix of gestures and noises for greetings. Ear spreading and ear flapping were obvious greeting signs, though there were also subtle signals, such as tail raising.

The most common ones were a mix of rumbling noises and ear flapping. However, this was usually only observed between females and males.

The greeting type also apparently changed depending on whether the greeted elephant was looking. When the subject looked, elephants were more likely to make use of visual actions, such as trunk swinging and area spreading. However, when they did not look, the elephants were more likely to make sounds.

According to Eleuteri, the study offers evidence that elephants aim gestures towards one another. He adds that since the same greeting signals were also found in wild elephants, they think that such repertoire of greetings could be common for all elephants.

Moving forward, their next steps would be to examine the flexibility of elephants as they do the gesture.