New research explores how African savannah elephants use vocalizations, gestures and secretions when they meet up with companions

When humans meet up with a companion they haven’t seen for a while, they may wave, shake hands or hug while saying something like, “Hey, how are you?”

Now, new research suggests African savannah elephants do the same. These massive mammals greet each other with a mix of gestures and sounds—by flapping their ears, making rumbling noises, waggling their tails and reaching out their trunks, scientists reported last week in the journal Communications Biology.

Elephants are highly intelligent, social creatures that live in “fission-fusion societies,” meaning they regularly split up—then later reunite—as they roam around their environment.

When elephants meet again after spending time apart, they appear to greet each other. However, researchers weren’t sure whether the animals were communicating intentionally. They were also curious about how elephants use gestures and vocalizations in combination, a concept known as multimodal communication.

“This is a first step to understanding the ways elephants communicate with vision and touch,” says study lead author Vesta Eleuteri, an animal behaviorist at the University of Vienna, to ABC News’ Julia Jacobo. “There had been descriptions of them using different body movements, but we didn’t really know whether these were actually communicative.”

To better understand elephant greetings, researchers worked with nine semi-captive African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) at the Jafuta Reserve in Zimbabwe that spend their days roaming freely and their nights in stables. They observed the animals—five males and four females—in November and December 2021.