Elephants Can Remember Their Human Caregivers

There’s an old saying that an elephant never forgets. And there is a lot of truth in that. In fact, evidence shows that elephants remember watering holes that they have visited years ago and even other elephants that they have not seen in a long time.

An elephant’s memory is actually the key to survival for the entire herd, according to The Cleveland Zoological Society. Time and distance do not seem to faze these pachyderms. But does this memory transcend species? The answer is yes!

A new study, published in the journal ZooKeepers shows that elephants can remember the scent (the way most animals recognize others) of their former caregivers long after separation, reported Eco Watch.

Studying elephants reaction to former human caregivers
The study, which was part of Martin Kränzlin’s graduate thesis at the Zoological Institute at Kiel University in Germany, set out to see if elephants would be able to recall these humans that they interacted with.

The study was conducted at Lower Saxony’s Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, Germany. The subjects, Bibi and Panya, two female Asian elephants moved to the wildlife park from a zoo in Berlin 13 years prior to the study. They had no contact with their former zoo keepers.

“There are exciting stories of Asian elephants that suggest this,” Kränzlin said in a press release from the university. “For example, it has been reported that elephants threw stones at a former owner they didn’t like when they met again many years later. However, these are only anecdotal reports; this question has not yet been scientifically investigated.”

The researchers contacted the elephant’s three former male zoo keepers in the Berlin zoo and asked them to participate by wearing T-shirts for eight hours that would be used for scent stimulus. In addition the men were recorded saying short sentences and they were photographed.

In the experiment, the researchers set up two racks that were next to each other outside the enclosure. On one rack, stimulus was presented from a former caregiver and on the other, stimulus from an unknown person was shown. The elephants could not reach the racks with their trunks but they repeatedly tried to.

The behavior of the pachyderms was filmed. The researchers believed that Bibi and Panya would reach out more often to the stimuli of their former keepers. And that was the case but only with the T-shirts.

“Our results are a clear indication that elephants can at least remember the scent of their former keepers, even decades later,” said Professor Christine Böhmer from Kiel University, who led the study.

The relevance of the study
While more research is needed with a larger number of test subjects, to confirm the results, this is still a very important study for zoos around the world. If elephants really can remember their keepers for long periods of time after separation, then these keepers are very important to their charges.

The connection between species goes beyond domesticated animals like dogs and cats. A stable relationship between pachyderms and their humans is essential for the wellbeing of these large land mammals.