African elephant
Loxodonta africana
Researchers in Kenya recorded hundreds of elephant rumbles and fed them to a machine-learning model. The model could tell which elephant a call was meant for, because part of each call identified the receiver. When the team played those calls back, elephants responded more strongly to the ones addressed to them.
Dolphins and parrots also use name-like calls, but they copy the sound the other animal makes. Elephants don’t imitate. Their names are arbitrary sounds, the way human names are, which is rare outside our own species and suggests elephants are capable of abstract thought.
It is like shouting a name across a crowded field and having only one friend turn around.
