From Newsgroup: sci.lang


https://phys.org/news/2025-07-elephants-gesture-intention-communicate-desires.html

Humans have long mastered the art of expressing their goals and needs
through both language and gestures. A similar behavior is also observed
in non-human primates, who use complex gestures to convey what they
want, but does the use of deliberate gestures extend beyond primates to
other members of the animal kingdom?

A recent study provided the first-ever evidence that, in the presence of
a visually attentive audience, elephants are capable of using a wide
range of gestures to convey their desires.
...
To test whether elephants intentionally gesture to communicate their
goals, the researchers presented 17 semi-captive African Savannah
elephants in Zimbabwe with two trays: one containing six apples (the
desired item) and the other empty (the non-desired item).

Their attempts to communicate with the experimenters were then recorded
across three different outcomes. The first scenario was when they
successfully communicated, and the experimenter gave the elephant all
six apples. The second was when their goals were not met, and they were
given the empty tray. The third was when their goals were partially met,
and they received only one apple from the tray.

During this entire process, it was observed that elephants displayed
clear goal-directed intentionality, as their gestures were directed only towards an attentive human or the object they desired, never towards an irrelevant object.

When their goals were not being met, the elephants got creative and came
up with new gestures to convey their message instead of repeating the
same actions.

Intentionality of communication is seen as a factor that distinguishes
human language from other forms of animal communication. Our words and gestures are directed towards someone to achieve a certain goal, which
can be as simple as saying hello to more complex situations, such as negotiating rent.

Scientists often categorize intentionality into different levels of complexity. The simplest form is zero-order intentionality, referring to reactions produced in response to stimuli such as pain or touch. The
next level is first-order, or goal-directed intentionality, where communication is used deliberately to influence someone's behavior. The
most complex is second-order intentionality, where communication is
aimed at changing someone's mind.

While several studies have shown that non-human apes use gestures with first-order intentionality, very little was known about similar behavior
in non-primatesrCountil now.

Given the animals' complex social structures and advanced cognitive
abilities, the researchers chose to investigate their ability to gesture
with intentionality.

The researchers observed 38 different gesture types and a total of 313
gesture tokensrCoeach individual instance of a gesture being usedrCofrom the 17 semi-captive elephants participating in the research.

The elephants used gestures to communicate their desire to get the
apples only when a visually attentive experimenter was present near them.

They were more likely to continue gesturing when their goal was only
partially met, such as receiving some, but not all, the apples, than
when they were fully satisfied. Furthermore, the elephants elaborated
their gesturing when their goal was not met, compared to when it was
fully met.

This study establishes the existence of goal-directed communication in semi-captive elephants.
...


https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.242203
Investigating intentionality in elephant gestural communication



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