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Wild Elephants Used 41 Gesture Types to Make Others Move Away or Stop

Two African bush elephants trunk wrestling in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa
Research · Behaviour

Wild African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) used 41 distinct gesture types during conflicts with other elephants, and the gestures were organised around two main goals: getting another elephant to move away or making it stop what it was doing. The study, conducted in Addo Elephant National Park and Marakele National Park in South Africa, also found several behavioural signs that the elephants were directing signals toward a recipient rather than simply producing fixed displays.

Goal-directed intentional communication means that a signal is used to influence another individual’s behaviour and is adjusted according to whether that goal has been achieved. Researchers have documented such flexibility extensively in great apes, but systematic evidence from wild elephants communicating with other elephants has been limited.

Thirty-two actions produced 41 gesture types

The researchers analysed agonistic interactions — encounters involving conflict, threat, displacement or competition — and separated the elephants’ movements into gesture actions and gesture types. Thirty-two basic actions produced 41 gesture types because some actions could be performed in different ways or with different orientations toward the recipient.

The trunk was especially important and contributed to almost half of the gesture types. Gestures included movements of the trunk, ears, head and whole body, as well as physical contact. Rather than every gesture carrying one fixed meaning, many could be used flexibly toward either of the two main goals.

Among 168 successful communication outcomes, 134 — 80% — ended with the recipient moving away, while 34 — 20% — ended with the recipient stopping its behaviour. Of the 33 gesture types that occurred often enough to compare across successful outcomes, 21 were used for both goals, 11 only for moving another elephant away and one only for stopping behaviour.

Elephants checked whether the recipient was paying attention

The strongest evidence for intentionality came from what happened around the gestures. Elephants checked their recipient before gesturing in 97% of the relevant cases and continued to monitor the recipient during 98%. Most gestures were also produced when the other elephant was visually attentive.

After gesturing, the signaller usually paused to see what happened next: response waiting occurred after 90% of the analysed parts of gesture bouts. If the desired response did not occur, elephants frequently continued signalling; persistence was recorded after 83% of the relevant bout parts.

Together, audience checking, sensitivity to the recipient’s attention, waiting for a response and persisting after failure form a stronger case for goal-directed signalling than any single gesture would on its own. The study therefore describes the communication as intentional in the behavioural sense: the elephant appears to signal toward a particular individual and modifies its signalling according to the response.

The two populations shared much of the repertoire but used it differently

Addo and Marakele elephants shared 26 of the 41 gesture types, or 63% of the full repertoire. Both populations also had nine gesture types that were used particularly regularly, but only three of those most frequent types overlapped: Ear Spread, Ear Flap and Trunk Push recipient.

The ecological setting of conflict also differed. Competition in Addo was frequently centred on water, whereas elephants in Marakele often competed over reeds. These contrasting resources were accompanied by differences in which gestures were used most often, even though the overall success of gesturing and the tendency to persist did not differ clearly between the populations.

This combination of a largely shared repertoire and population-specific emphasis suggests that elephants have a flexible set of signals rather than a rigid catalogue of one gesture for one situation. The study adds wild African bush elephants to the growing group of animals in which goal-directed gestural communication can be demonstrated through how signals are produced, monitored and repeated during social interactions.

Sources and image credit

  1. Eleuteri, V., Letrari, A., Bates, L., Hobaiter, C., & Stoeger, A. (2026). Elephant gestural communication during agonistic interactions: repertoire, intentionality, and goals. Animal Cognition.Primary open-access peer-reviewed article published 25 September 2026. Wild African bush elephants in Addo and Marakele used 41 gesture types derived from 32 actions toward two main goals, Move away and Stop behaviour. Audience checking, response waiting and persistence supported goal-directed intentional communication; populations overlapped strongly in repertoire but differed in frequently used gestures and contested resources.

Image: Two African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) trunk wrestling in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa, 28 October 2016. Photo: Martinvl / Wikimedia Commons. Representative image from one of the study parks; not necessarily study animals. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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