The recorded voices were played for hundreds of elephants across 47 family groups during daylight hours.
When elephants heard the adult male Maasai voices, they tended to gather together, start investigative smelling with their trunks, and move cautiously away.
But when elephants heard females, boys, or adult male Kamba speakers, they did not show concern.
“The ability to distinguish between Maasai and Kamba men delivering the same phrase in their own language suggests that elephants can discriminate between different languages,” said co-author Graeme Shannon, a visiting fellow in psychology at the University of Sussex.
That is not the same as understanding what the words mean, but still shows that elephants can decipher the more sing-songy Maasai language from the Kamba tongue, perhaps based on inflections, use of vowels, and other cues.
“It is very sophisticated what the elephants are doing,” said Keith Lindsay, a conservation biologist and member of the scientific advisory committee of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project.
“A lot of animals will take flight at just the general threat posed by people, but a smart animal doesn’t do that,” he told AFP.
“Their response to hearing Maasai men talking was to be alert, to move away, but not to run away in total fear,” added Lindsay, who was not involved in the study.
“It is suggesting that elephants are capable of thinking, (of) recognizing that if Maasai men are talking, they are not likely to be hunting because if they were hunting, they would be quiet.”
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