Elephants are one of the smartest creatures on earth, and one of the few animals that have some form of speech. But elephant speech is vastly different than human communication and includes subsonic rumbles.
Here are some of the questions scientists have been asking and the answers they've come up with so far:
Do Elephants Talk?
While elephants don't "talk," per say, at least not like humans do, they do have some forms of vocalization and communication that express specific concepts.
In addition to snorts, trumpeting and croaking sounds, one of the most common forms of elephant communication is rumbling. The rumbles that an elephant produces are usually too low in pitch for humans to hear, about twenty hertz, but to other elephants, they sound like lively conversation.
Researchers Katherine Leighty, Joseph Soltis and their colleagues at the Wildlife Tracking Center at Disney's Animal Kingdom have recently been conducting research on the elephants at the center to determine exactly what these rumbles mean and why elephants make these infrasonic sounds.
The elephants can also use their rumbles as a way to determine other elephants locations, judging from the strength of the rumble and the voice of the rumbler where their friends or family members are located in proximity to their own position.
How Far Can Elephant Rumbling Sounds Travel?
Dr Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, of Stanford University studies elephants in the wild in Nambia, Africa through her nonprofit organization Utopia Scientific . Her studies have found that elephants' low-frequency rumbles can travel over two kilometers, and some studies have suggested that the sounds might travel up to 10 km.
Not only do these vibrations travel through the air, but these sound waves can also be transmitted through the ground the elephants stand on. Elephants sense these long-distance seismic vibrations through their feet and also by pressing their trunks to the ground.
Can Elephants Recognize Voices?
According to the scientists at the Wildlife Tracking Center, elephants seem to be able to recognize the specific rumbles generated by friends and family, just as humans can recognize voices even when they can't see the speaker. Elephants will react differently if the rumble they hear is from a friend or from a stranger.
Friendly elephant rumbling cause the elephants to move closer to each other, while unfamiliar or unfriendly voices lead to avoidance. Elephants of lower social standing in the family group will also raise the pitch of their rumbles and sometimes start exhibiting shaky rumbles when they are responding to a dominant member of their group.
In Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell's research, she discovered that elephants will respond rapidly to danger rumbles from members of their own group, but ignore the same kinds of calls from elephant groups they don't know.
Can Rumbles Help Protect Endangered Elephants?
Elephants use their rumbles to communicate a variety of messages. One of the most important is communicating mating behavior. Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell has been studying the possibility of playing the rumbles of female elephants to entice male elephants away from dangerous areas where poachers lurk or where farmers resent the rampaging of elephants in their fields and into more elephant-friendly protected areas, such as Etosha National Park.
Sources:
Soltis, J., Leong, K., and Savage, A. 2005. “African elephant vocal communication II: rumble variation reflects individual identity and emotional state of callers,” Animal Behaviour, 70: 589-599.
Katherine A. Leighty, Joseph Soltisa, Christina M. Wesoleka and Anne Savagea. Rumble vocalizations mediate interpartner distance in African elephants, Loxodonta africana. Animal Behaviour Volume 76, Issue 5, November 2008, Pages 1601-1608.
Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa. University Of Chicago Press. 2007
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