Do African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta africana) Show Interspecific Social Long-Term Memory for Their Zoo Keepers?

Abstract

"An elephant never forgets" is a popular phrase that refers not only to the elephant's extraordinary ability to remember migration routes but also to its pronounced social long-term memory (SLTM). Previous studies have shown intra- and interspecies SLTM performance, but the ability of elephants to have memories of individual humans has not yet been investigated. We tested this interspecific SLTM using auditory, olfactory, and visual stimuli, each from familiar and unfamiliar persons, in two African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) cows living in a zoo. The two-choice object tests revealed a higher interest in sensory stimuli from familiar keepers they had not seen for 13 years than in unfamiliar people. Statistically significant differences were found for olfactory stimuli. In addition, there was significantly more interest in visual stimuli from current keepers than in stimuli from unfamiliar people. Contrary to the results of a previous study with elephants, this was not observed for olfactory stimuli. Due to the small sample size and magnitude of the influencing factors, that is, outdoor experiment, only spatial separation of the animals, these results only represent indications of the possible interspecific SLTM. Nevertheless, we were able to provide the first empirical evidence that L. africana stores information about specific people over a long period of time. Further studies with larger sample sizes, cross-modal testing, and people disliked by the elephants could provide more insights.