Doctor Curmudgeon® Don’t Call Me Dumbo!

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

What do I do when I want to contact a friend?

Well, of course, I just reach for my mobile phone and text or place a call. Or I can always email.

But what if I were an elephant? How would my friend know that I was calling him or her?

This is not a problem for a group of elephants who live in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

Few animals who live in the wild have unique names for each other. But elephants do!

A study was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in which a group of biologists studied the rumbles of elephants. The biologists in their jeeps followed a family of elephants. They recorded over six hundred vocalizations in Northern and in in Southern Kenya.

With the help of machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, they were able to distinguish the specific name of an individual elephant, and could predict which elephant was being called.

Without mobile phones, the African elephants can chat with each other. These elephant rumbles are well below the range of human hearing. There are other parts of their vocalizations that are not names but scientists have not been able to determine which vocalization is the specific name.

The lead author of the study, Mickey Pardo, behavioral ecologist, commented that the elephants “address one another with something like a name.” Pardo goes on to say that, “elephants use those sounds to get the attention of the individual in question, which requires sophisticated learning ability and understanding of social relationships.”

Unlike humans, elephants are able to hear over long distances. Elephants find this very important. They live in family groups. Occasionally, part of the group may separate. On hearing his individual name, the elephant responds and rejoins his family.

Just imagine that your Wi-Fi in the entire area is down. You need to call your child in a playground blocks away. You have a problem trying to communicate. But an elephant mother would not.
And there is absolutely no evidence that any elephant ever had the name of Dumbo.

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com

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