A groundbreaking study published in July 2025 demonstrates that African savannah elephants use intentional gestures to communicate their goals, similar to great apes[^1]. The research team presented semi-captive elephants with desired and undesired items, recording their communication attempts when experimenters met, partially met, or failed to meet their goals[^1].
The study identified 38 different gesture types that elephants used almost exclusively when a visually attentive experimenter was present[^1]. The elephants showed three key criteria for intentional communication:
- Audience directedness - signaling only when someone was watching
- Persistence - continuing to gesture when goals were partially met
- Elaboration - using new signals when communication failed
The research was conducted at the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe, where elephants combined specific vocalizations with gestures in greeting behaviors[^6]. They used different types of signals including:
- Silent-visual gestures
- Audible gestures
- Tactile gestures
- Rumble vocalizations
The findings reveal that elephants, like apes, assess the communicative effectiveness of their gesturing and adjust their signals based on the audience's visual attention[^6]. This expands understanding of intentional communication beyond the primate lineage[^9].
[^1]: Royal Society Open Science - Investigating intentionality in elephant gestural communication
[^6]: Nature - Multimodal communication and audience directedness in the greeting behaviour of semi-captive African savannah elephants
[^9]: Pangea Trust - Gestures and greetings used by elephants show intentional multimodal communication