The ability of African elephants to communicate remains distorted, decades after culls disrupted the social fabric of their herds, research suggests.

A study by the University of Sussex found that elephant herds whose adults were killed during the culls of the 1970s and 1980s had poorer communication skills when compared with other herds whose natural social structures were left intact.

Professor Karen McComb, lead researcher, said that such human intervention appeared to have impaired the “social understanding” of these complex creatures.

The scientists, whose results are published in Frontiers in Zoology, said this was the first “systematic evidence that social skills may be significantly impaired by man-made disruption”. They said the effects were similar to post traumatic stress disorder in humans.

Researchers compared the