African elephants appear to make their calls more alike as some group conversations unfold, potentially helping a herd coordinate a shared course of action.
Researchers analysed 902 recordings from 84 wild elephants across 39 families and identified context-specific patterns in overlapping rumble choruses. During Contact and Cadenced exchanges, which can involve separated elephants reconnecting or groups preparing to change activity, individual calls became acoustically more similar over time. The study stops short of demonstrating causation because playback experiments have not yet tested elephants’ responses to this convergence.
https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-releases/detail/9451
