Wild elephants seem to address each other using distinctive, rumbling sounds could be akin to names.

野生大象似乎会使用独特的隆隆声来相互沟通，这种声音类似于个体的名字。

That’s to a provocative new in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, which was inspired by earlier work showing that bottlenose dolphins have signature whistles.

这是《自然生态与进化》杂志上一项具有挑战性的新研究的结论，该研究受到早期研究的启发，早期研究表明瓶鼻海豚有独特的哨声。

“Sometimes another bottlenose dolphin will imitate somebody else's signature whistle in order to get their attention, so effectively calling by name,” says Mickey Pardo, a biologist at Cornell University.

“有时，另一只瓶鼻海豚会模仿其他海豚的独特哨声以引起它们的注意，这实际上就是在叫它们的名字，”康奈尔大学生物学家米奇·帕尔多说。

He wondered if elephants, which are known to be vocal mimics, might do something similar.

他想知道，作为已知的声音模仿者，大象是否也会做类似的事情。

“The idea from the outset of this project,” says Pardo, “was to try to out if elephants have names.”

“这个项目的初衷，”帕尔多说，“是试图弄清楚大象是否有名字。”

He means names that the animals call themselves — rather than names like Margaret and Marie that researchers working in nature preserves have given them.

他指的是动物用来称呼自己的名字——而不是如玛格丽特和玛丽等大自然保护区研究人员给它们取的名字。

Elephants’ trumpeting is well known, but Pardo says trumpeting is an abrupt noise that’s more like screaming or laughing. He figured that if elephants had names, they’d be somehow encoded in elephants’ constant, low-frequency rumblings.

大象的鸣叫声广为人知，但帕尔多说鸣叫声是一种突然的声音，更像是尖叫或大笑。他推测，如果大象有名字，那么这些名字一定是以某种方式被编码在它们持续不断的低频隆隆声中。

“The rumbles themselves are highly structurally variable,” says Pardo, who conducted this while working at Colorado University. “There's quite a lot of variation in their acoustic structure.”

“隆隆声本身在结构上具有高度的可变性，”帕尔多说，他在科罗拉多州立大学进行这项研究时发现了这一点。“它们的声学结构有很大的变化。”

And elephants make these noises in all kinds of contexts — everything from greeting family members to comforting a calf to staying in touch with relatives over long distances.

大象会在各种情况下发出这种特定的声音——从问候家庭成员到安慰小象，再到与远方的亲戚保持联系。