Elephants

June 28, 2024 12:00 PM

Bornean elephants endangered due to human activity, wildlife experts say

Agriculture, mining, logging and other human activities on Borneo have caused elephants living on the Southeast Asian island to become endangered, an assessment by wildlife experts published on Thursday found. There are around 1,000 Bornean elephants left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whose "Red List" of animal species assesses their risk of extinction. Animals that are "critically endangered" are at extreme risk of extinction unless conse...

June 11, 2024 11:30 AM

Study shows elephants might call each other by name

Over the years, researchers who study elephants have noticed an intriguing phenomenon. Sometimes when an elephant makes a vocalization to a group of other elephants, all of them respond. But sometimes when that same elephant makes a similar call to the group, only a single individual responds. Could it be that elephants address each other by the equivalent of a name? A new study involving wild African savannah elephants in Kenya lends support to this idea. The researchers analyzed vocalization...

May 14, 2024 1:27 PM

For elephants, like people, greetings are a complicated affair

People greet each other in a variety of ways. They might say "hello," "guten tag," "hola," "konnichiwa" or "g'day." They might shake hands, bump fists, make a fist-and-palm gesture or press their hands together with a gentle head bow. They might kiss on the cheek or hand. And they might give a nice big hug. For elephants, greetings appear to be a similarly complex affair. A study based on observations of African savannah elephants in the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe provides new insight into the ...