Who needs phones or social media when you have the nose of an African elephant? These amazing animals don’t need a Facebook status update to tell them who’s who and what’s going on in their community, because their highly developed sense of smell says it all!
A fascinating study led by Professor Louw Hoffman from the University of Queensland’s Queensland Alliance of Agriculture and Food Innovation, found that African elephants in wildlife parks in Malawi use their scent-sniffing superpowers to recognize other elephants’ age, health, reproductive status, and even family relationships! The researchers tested the DNA, glands, urine, and poop (yes, poop) of 113 African elephants and found that certain chemicals were common within family groups, while others were unique to each individual. Elephants, it seems, can even recognize long-lost family members just from the whiff of their poop or other excretions. They never mate with a sibling, even if they haven’t seen each other for years, which means they can tell when a strange elephant is nearby, just by its scent.
But wait, it gets better! Social behavior suggests that elephants use their amazing sense of smell to keep an eye, or rather, a nose on other elephants within their herd as well as any newcomers. They greet each other with high-pitched squeals and some major ear-flapping, which, according to Hoffman, might actually be them pushing their pheromones toward the other elephant as a sign of recognition. When elephants charge each other while flapping their ears, they may be using their pheromones as a warning, kind of like saying, “Don’t mess with me!”
Elephants can not only quickly identify different smells but can also remember them for a long time. Some of the elephants in the study were bred in captivity and had learned to take a tourist’s hat and smell it as a trick. The really mind-blowing part? When the same tourist returned hours later, the elephant could instantly recognize who the hat belonged to.
Elephants are proof that there’s much more to communication than just sounds. According to Professor Hoffman, their senses are more finely attuned than ours, which means we have a lot to learn from these gentle giants. The researchers believe that elephants could even be trained to detect various things like blood and explosives! Who knows, one day, instead of bomb-sniffing dogs, we might see elephant security checkpoints!
This study, co-led by Katharina von Dürckheim and Alison Leslie from the University of Stellenbosch, has given us a unique glimpse into the secret world of elephants and their incredible sense of smell. So, the next time you come across an African elephant, be mindful of what you smell like – they’ll remember you for it!