Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 15 hours ago

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Vesta Eleuteri

Abstract Title: How elephants say "Hello": Vocal-gestural combinations and audience directedness in the greeting behaviour of African savannah elephants

Co-Authors: Vesta Eleuteri; Lucy Bates; Catherine Hobaiter; Jake Rendle-Worthington; Angela Stöger
Author affiliations: University of Vienna; University of Portsmouth; University of St Andrews; Elephant CREW; University of Vienna
Preferred Theme: Behaviour


Abstract: Many species communicate by combining vocalisations with visual and tactile signals for multimodal communication. Elephants live in multi-level societies where individuals regularly separate and reunite. Upon reunion, elephants often engage in elaborate greeting rituals where they use different vocalisations and visual and tactile body acts. However, whether elephants use audience directed gestures and how they combine vocalisations with gestures during greeting is still unknown. We used separation-reunion events to explore the greeting behaviour of semi-captive elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe. We investigated whether elephants direct silent-visual, audible, and tactile gestures at their audience based on their attentional state, and the ways and order in which they combine vocalisations with gestures. We show that elephants select gesture modality according to the audience´s attention, indicating evidence of first-order intentional use. We further show that elephants incorporate vocalisations and gestures in different combinations and orders. The most frequent combination consists of rumble vocalisations with ear-flapping gestures, used most often between females. By showing that a species evolutionarily distant to our primate lineage shows sensitivity to their audience’s attention in their gesturing and combines gestures with vocalisations, our study enhances our understanding of the emergence of first-order intentionality and multimodal communication across taxa.