Question: Can a adult elephant still know who his mum is?

Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

Yes – females stay with their female relatives usually for life and elephants have been known to recognise eachother even after years of separation. In the wild they locate eachother via infrasound (which is a means of communicating over long distances) and when groups come back together they engage in really extensive greeting ceremonies (where they make lots of noise, sometimes spin in circles, touch eachother with their trunks and flap their ears). Similar things have been observed in captive elephants too – it is absolutely true that elephants never forget! There is a pretty cool video here for you to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF8em4uPdCg