Elephants Can Distinguish the Sound of Individual Human Voices

A fascinating new study reveals that African elephants can distinguish people of different ethnic groups after hearing them utter a few sentences. They can also tell the difference between a male, female, adult and a child, in addition to a threatening human voice and a friendly one.

"They're using vocal information from another species - us - and they're using that to discern threat," says study co-author Graeme Shannon, a behavioral ecologist at Britain's University of Sussex, according to USA Today. "That takes really advanced cognitive abilities. ... These are subtle differences these elephants are attending to."

The wild elephants can also distinguish between the roar of a single lion and a trio of lions, while older elephants can tell the roar of a male lion from the roar of a female, stated Shannon and co-author Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in England.

Researchers conducted the study by playing recordings of people for around 1500 African elephants in Kenya. As a result, scientists found that they have an advanced thinking skill that allows them to figure out who is a threat.

"Basically they have developed this very rich knowledge of the humans that they share their habitat with," said McComb, a professor of animal behavior and cognition, reports NBC News. "Memory is key. They must build up that knowledge somehow."

Shannon added that, "They are making such a fine-level discrimination using human language skills. They're able to acquire quite detailed knowledge. The only way of doing this is with an exceptionally large brain."