Mar 11, 2014 01:41 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Elephants may be able to spot different ethnic groups after hearing them speak just a few sentences,   according to a recent study Counsel and Heal reported.

Researchers found that elephants are able to distinguish men and women and between adult and children just by listening to human utterances, Counsel and Heal reported.

"They're using vocal information from another species - us - and they're using that to discern threat," study co-author Graeme Shannon, a behavioral ecologist at Britain's University of Sussex, told USA Today. "That takes really advanced cognitive abilities.... These are subtle differences these elephants are attending to."

Previous studies have found that Elephants can distinguish between the roar of a single lion and the roaring of a trio of lions, and the oldest, most seasoned elephants can tell the roar of a male lion from the roar of a female.

For the study, researchers examined 1,500 or so elephants roaming Kenya's Amboseli National Park. It is the first research to establish that elephants can distinguish men and women and hence react accordingly to different level of risks.

"The study is indicating that elephants are learning to adapt to a growing threat in their environment, and the unfortunate and disturbing part is that threat is us. ... It just goes to show how intelligent these animals are that they can be this flexible," Joshua Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at research non-profit Think Elephants International, who was not involved in the new study, told USA Today.

Plotnik added that the elephants' abilities are pretty remarkable.

This study was published in the issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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