The Secret Language of Elephants
Published by In particular they have wondered how apparently random group of elephants, sometimes separated by miles, can manage to move in a cohesive, coordinated manner toward the same destination…Today researchers have discovered that the elephants are communicating- by using sounds at such a low frequency that the human ear is incapable of detecting them.
The Secret Language of Elephants
By Mr. Ghaz, September 27, 2010
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The Secret Language of Elephants
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Animal researches have long been puzzled by certain aspects of elephant behavior. In particular they have wondered how apparently random group of elephants, sometimes separated by miles, can manage to move in a cohesive, coordinated manner toward the same destination. Equally mysterious is how, without any discernible means of communication, male elephants are able to track down a female in heat even if she is many miles away.
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Today researchers have discovered that the elephants are communicating – by using sounds at such a low frequency that the human ear is incapable of detecting them.
Talking heads
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In 1985 Katherine Payne, a researcher at Cornell University in New York State, was observing a group of elephants at a zoo when she became aware of a spasmodic throbbing in the air “like the slight shock wave one can fell from far-off thunder.” She then noticed that it coincided with a fluttering on an elephant’s forehead, between the eyes, and concluded that these signs were evidence of a special means of communication.
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Payne and her colleagues at Cornell started to investigate this discovery by using sophisticated ultrasonic recording equipment. It due course, recordings confirmed what Payne suspected: the throbbing she had previously experienced was created by sounds below the range of human hearing but capable of being captured on tape.
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Produced by the fluttering of an elephant’s forehead, the sounds most often accompanied such activities as the arrival of departure of the keepers. But the observers also saw a female communicating with a male, even though a concrete wall separated the two animals.
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Although the animals studied were in captivity, researchers concluded that these sounds would be of most practical use in the wild. Audible elephant noises- trumpeting, growling, and rumbling- would not carry far because they would soon be absorbed by grass, shrubs, and tree. But inaudible, Low- frequency sounds carries far greater distances than high frequencies.
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With One Accord: How large groups of elephants suddenly move off together, seemingly coordinated, is one of the great mysteries of animal behavior. Since no visible signal is given, how are the elephants communicating? Researchers believer that they may, at last, have the answer.
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Key Factor
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People who have worked with elephants have always known that they have a keen sense of hearing. When using elephants as mounts, hunters say that the animals can distinguish between 27 different verbal commands, and scientists have been impressed by the elephant’s ability to recognize subtle musical variations.
But until recently no one realized that, hearing was a key factor in the elephant’s mysterious ability to synchronize scattered groups and in a male elephant’s finding a female during the critical two days a month that she is in heat. (scienceray)
Read more: http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/the-secret-language-of-elephants/#ixzz10k7oMJsC
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