'Move away' and 'stop that!' Wild elephants use a rich gestural repertoire intentionally to 'mean business'

Amara: Welcome to The Long Memory — I'm Amara, an elephant biologist and science communicator, and this is the show where we go deep into the inner lives of the most remarkable animals on Earth. Every episode, we follow the science into places that genuinely surprise me, even after all these years in the field. Today we've got a lot to get into — wild elephants using intentional gestures to tell each other exactly what they mean, a tiny calf at the Smithsonian taking her very first brave steps toward her herd, and a rescued elephant in Kenya who turned out to be exactly the leader everyone needed. Before we dive in, a warm thank you to our sponsors: Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows; Ago Consulting — pronounced "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a portfolio of companies across the silicon industry. These are people building the future, and we're grateful they're along for the ride. Okay — let's talk elephants. Amara: So, the Mind of the Elephant. I want to start here because this one genuinely lit me up when I read it. Researchers from the University of Portsmouth, the University of Vienna, and the University of St Andrews have been studying wild African savanna elephants, and what they found adds a whole new dimension to how we think about elephant communication. We've known for a long time that elephants are extraordinarily vocal — rumbles, trumpets, roars, contact calls that travel miles through the ground. But this research focused on something we've paid less attention to: gestures. Physical, intentional gestures. And not just a handful of them. A rich repertoire. Things like head swings, ear waves, leg lifts, trunk reaches — used deliberately, in competitive situations, to mean very specific things. Amara: Now, when scientists say "intentional," that's a loaded word, and they mean it carefully. A gesture is considered intentional when the animal waits for a response, adjusts what it does based on whether the other animal is paying attention, and stops when the message lands. These elephants were doing all of that. We're talking about something functionally equivalent to "move away from that" or "stop that right now." And they weren't random. The gestures were context-specific — different gestures for different competitive situations — which tells us these animals have a mental catalog of signals and know which one fits which moment. Amara: What I find so compelling about this is what it implies about elephant minds. To use a gesture intentionally, you have to have a theory of mind — at least a working version of one. You have to understand that the other animal has a perspective, that they need to receive your signal, and that your signal can change their behavior. You're not just reacting. You're communicating. And this isn't happening in a lab with trained animals — this is wild elephants, in their natural social world, navigating complex relationships with a toolkit of meaningful signals. The more we look, the more sophisticated the picture becomes. Elephants don't just remember the landscape or the faces of their family. They remember what works. They remember how to make themselves understood. That's a mind that is actively, flexibly engaging with the social world around it. Amara: And here's the thing — this fits perfectly with everything else we know about elephant cognition. They recognize themselves in mirrors. They use tools. They've been documented teaching younger elephants. They console grieving herd members. The gesture research isn't an outlier. It's another piece of a portrait that keeps getting richer. These animals are talking to each other in ways we're only just beginning to decode. Amara: Now let's move into the Heart of the Herd, because this is where things get tender — and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. I want to talk about Linh Mai. She's an Asian elephant calf born at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, and she's been making headlines recently — first for her public debut, and then for something that I think is actually more meaningful: the slow, careful, brave process of learning to belong to her herd. Amara: Because here's the thing about elephant calves that people don't always realize — joining the herd isn't instant. It's not like being born and just slotting in. It's a gradual social negotiation, especially when there are older, established elephants involved. Linh Mai has been taking what the zoo calls "steady steps" toward socializing with her herdmates, and I love that phrasing, because that's exactly what it looks like. Steady steps. Cautious approaches. Retreats when things feel like too much. Then trying again. Amara: Elephant calves are extraordinarily socially dependent. In the wild, a calf is born into a web of relationships — mothers, grandmothers, aunts, older siblings — and it spends its first years being watched, guided, and protected by all of them. That web is its education, its safety net, and its emotional foundation. In a zoo setting, building those bonds takes time and intention, and the care teams at the Smithsonian have been doing this thoughtfully — giving Linh Mai space to set the pace, letting her decide when she's ready to be closer. Amara: And there's something in that process — watching a small animal learn to trust — that resonates with everything we know about elephant social bonds. Elephant herds are matriarchal, led almost always by the oldest female, the one with the deepest memory and the widest experience. The youngest calves literally learn how to be elephants from her. They watch how she responds to a new smell on the wind, how she moves the herd toward water, how she holds her ground when there's danger. And in return, the whole herd invests in that calf. They rumble softly to it. They touch it with their trunks. They stand close when it's unsettled. Amara: Linh Mai is right at the beginning of that journey, and I find it genuinely moving to think about. She doesn't know yet what she'll become — but she's already practicing the most important thing an elephant can do: reaching toward connection. That instinct is deep and old and real. And watching it unfold, even in a zoo setting, gives us a window into what elephant society is built on at its most fundamental level. It's built on showing up for each other. Steadily. Step by step. Amara: Alright, let's get to our Elephant-and-People story — and this one I've been sitting with all week, because it's the kind of story that rearranges something in your chest. It comes out of Kenya, and it centers on a rescued elephant described by the people who know her as "sensitive." Now, I want to pause on that word for a moment, because in elephant care circles, "sensitive" isn't a soft word. It means an animal that is highly attuned — to the moods of others, to subtle shifts in environment, to emotional undercurrents that other elephants might miss. Sensitive elephants feel everything more. Amara: This elephant was rescued, meaning she came through something hard — loss, disruption, the kind of rupture that orphaned elephants carry in their bodies as well as their memories. Elephants who lose their herds early often show signs that look, to anyone paying attention, like grief and trauma. They startle easily. They're slow to trust. They need time and consistency before they begin to settle. And yet, despite all of that — or maybe because of it — this elephant emerged as a herd leader. Not because she was the biggest or the most dominant, but because the other elephants chose to follow her. Amara: That's how elephant leadership works, and it's one of my favorite things about elephant society. The matriarch isn't elected and she isn't appointed. She's followed. The herd gravitates toward the female with the best judgment, the widest knowledge, the most reliable read on the world. And what the people caring for this herd observed was that the other elephants — animals who also came from hard places — found something in her that made them feel safer. They followed her movements. They oriented to her. They deferred to her in moments of uncertainty. Amara: There's research to support exactly this kind of dynamic. Studies on wild elephant herds have shown that herds led by older, more experienced matriarchs have higher calf survival rates. Those matriarchs remember more — more waterholes, more safe routes, more signals of danger. Their memory is the herd's survival advantage. But what's striking about this Kenyan rescue case is that the "sensitive" elephant wasn't necessarily the oldest or the most experienced in the traditional sense. She was the most emotionally perceptive. And her herd recognized that. Amara: I think about what it took for her to get there. To come through whatever she came through — to be rescued, to be held and cared for, to slowly rebuild trust in the world — and then to turn around and become the one that others lean on. That's not a small thing. That's resilience in its most profound form. And it's a reminder that the relationship between elephants and humans, when it's done with care and patience, can sometimes lead somewhere genuinely beautiful. Not a human saving an elephant in a tidy, one-directional way — but an elephant finding its way back to itself, and then leading others toward something that looks a lot like safety. A lot like home. Amara: So — gestures that mean "move away" and "stop that," a small calf taking brave steps toward her herd, a sensitive rescued elephant becoming the leader others gladly follow. What ties all of these together, I think, is this: elephants are always reaching. Toward each other, toward understanding, toward belonging. Their memory holds the map, and their feeling is the compass. We're lucky, honestly, that they let us close enough to see any of it. Amara: The Long Memory, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If today's stories moved you even a little — please subscribe, leave a review, share the show with someone who loves animals or science or just a good, true story. And check out the link in show notes for more on everything we talked about today. Stay curious, stay kind, and I'll see you next time.