Updated 01.04.2026
Elephant expert Joyce Poole poses for a photo. She has studied elephants for almost 5 decades and along with her husband has created the elephant ethogram, the first comprehensive library of thousands of elephant behaviors. There's nothing like this for any other species on earth.
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Do Elephant Have Names?
In this episode of Sentience Daniel Toker interviews ElephantVoices Senior Scientist, Dr. Mickey Pardo, about the inner lives of elephants and other animals and reflects on how this might change our relationship with them. "What if we’ve been dramatically underestimating what it’s like to be another animal? In this episode of Sentience, animal cognition researcher Mickey Pardo, PhD takes us inside the minds of other animals—from woodpeckers that track relationships between other birds to elephants that appear to use name-like calls to address one another. We explore how scientists can investigate the private mental lives of animals, what the famous mirror test actually tells us about self-awareness, and why humans have repeatedly moved the goalposts whenever another species demonstrates an ability we once thought was uniquely ours. We also dive into the future of animal communication: could AI uncover hidden patterns in the vocalizations of elephants, dolphins, and whales that humans have completely missed? And if animals have richer inner lives than we've assumed, what does that mean for how we understand intelligence, consciousness, and our relationship with the other minds sharing the planet with us?"
Elephant Voices, BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears
(Only available for UK listeners) In Between the Ears: Elephant Voices, science journalist Laura Spinney explores a unique archive of elephant calls and behaviour with its creator, Joyce Poole, a world authority on elephant communication. They listen to moments of birth, joy, mating, danger and death from the perspective of the elephants – as well as hearing Joyce's field note recordings from her studies. Elephant Ella is in labour and her family are trumpeting and rumbling in ceremony. Angelina watches in despair as one of her twin calfs floats seemingly lifeless down a stream. Edwina goes missing whilst her family call for her. Toni grieves over her dead calf. And is Malaika really mimicking a truck? This is elephant domesticity in audio form, except that there is nothing domesticated about these elephants. They belong to one of the 60-odd families who roam wild in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, and whom Joyce Poole has studied and recorded for nearly 50 years. The clip belongs to a remarkable online archive of elephant calls and behaviour, the Elephant Ethogram, that she and her husband Petter made public in 2021. The Amboseli Elephant Research Project founded by Cynthia Moss in 1972 and still run by her is the longest running of its kind, and much of what we know about elephant communication comes from it. It's thanks to Ella, Angelina, Edwina, Toni, Malaika and their families that we know elephants can communicate over staggeringly long distances, using beautiful, body-shaking calls below the audible range, that elephants address each other by name - being of the very few species besides humans to do so. Joyce Poole in conversation with Laura Spinney Music Composed by Nick Romero Flute - Carla Rees Producer Julian Mayers A Yada-Yada Production
Called by Name: Listening into the world of Elephants
Elephants call each other by name. They grieve. They remember. They communicate across distances in frequencies we are only beginning to hear. What does it mean to truly listen to another species — one with memory, language, and a social world as intricate as our own? In this Listening Field conversation, we enter the world of elephant communication with Dr. Mickey Pardo, who led the landmark discovery that elephants address one another with name-like calls — a finding that traveled around the world and cracked open new questions about animal cognition and communication. Moderated by Katie Surma of Inside Climate News, whose reporting sits at the intersection of science, rights of Nature, and environmental justice, this conversation asks not only what elephants are saying, but what it means for us to finally listen. This event is free and open to all. Registration is required. Called by Name is part of the 2026 Listening Field Series, ONE's year-long exploration of communication in the more-than-human world.
The largest video and audio library of elephant behaviors.