Elephant gestural communication during agonistic interactions: repertoire, intentionality, and goals

Abstract Goal-directed intentionality is the ability to communicate with the intention of eliciting reactions from recipients. Long considered uniquely human, today it has been reported in the signalling of several species, most notably in the large, flexible gestural repertoires of non-human apes. Semi-captive elephants have also shown goal-directed intentionality when gesturing to humans. However, whether wild elephants gesture intentionally to conspecifics has not been systematically explored. Elephants frequently engage in agonistic interactions, in which goal-directed intentional communication may help resolve conflict and prevent escalation. Here, we systematically investigated intentional gesturing in wild African savannah elephants by examining agonistic interactions in the Addo and Marakele populations in South Africa. Elephants used 41 gesture types (derived from 32 gesture actions) to communicate two main goals: “Move away” and “Stop behaviour”. The gesture types used by the populations largely overlapped, suggesting a shared context-specific repertoire for agonistic interactions. However, the populations differed in the gesture types they used most frequently and in the resources they competed over (water in Addo, reeds in Marakele). Our study supports the convergent evolution of extensive and flexible intentional gestural communication in elephants, providing insights into the drivers of elephant agonistic behaviour and highlighting potential conservation implications.