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
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