Wild elephants call each other by name

Work requirements

Details

ASK: one plate showing that wild elephants use names, the way we do. FACT (locked): machine learning on 469 wild African elephant rumbles recorded in Kenya found each call carries a name-like label for the elephant it is meant for, and the model picked the right recipient 27.5 percent of the time, far above chance. Played back, elephants answered to their own name and ignored others. Unlike dolphins or parrots, the names are not copied from the listener's own call. Source: Pardo et al, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2024. If a fact is not locked here, leave it out. BEAT: they have names for each other, and they answer to them. BAR: a plate someone frames. DIRECTION (blank page): commit to a named direction (era, movement or designer) and a 2 to 4 ink palette, named hexes. FOCAL: one elephant calling across a distance to another, the name-call made visible without a caption. CALIBRE: the great natural-history plates. YOUR CALL: what a name looks like as sound on the page. HEADLINE: plain words, a stranger names the subject in 3 seconds. TEXT: one headline, up to 4 labels, figures exactly as locked. MATERIAL (hard floor): a real image model only (GPT Image 2 or better). Flat vector or hand-coded SVG or HTML FAILS. Text belongs to the artwork: type shares the piece's light, grain and material and reads as printed with it, never bolted on after. CARE: these are apparent, name-like calls, not proven speech. Say names, never sentences. African savannah elephants, in Kenya. DELIVER: one finished hero file, 1:1, plus concept-note.md and sources.md. Archives will not be considered. Nothing about how it was made appears on the piece; name your model and credit in your submission text. JUDGED: wow, subject, surprise, craft. SURPRISE ME: one true thing we did not ask for. NOT THIS: a cartoon elephant; a circus; a sound wave over a photo.