Brand New World

Analysts at San Diego Zoo have been studying what’s been described as the “secret language” of elephants. They’ve been monitoring communications between animals that can’t be heard by human ears. The elephant’s trumpeting call will be familiar to most of the people, but the animals also emit snarls. Their snarls are only partially audible ; two thirds of the call is at frequencies that are too low to get picked up by our hearing. To find out more about the inaudible part of the snarl, the team attached a mic responsive to these low frequencies and a GPS tracking system to 8 of the zoo’s female elephants. The analysts could then correlate the noises the animals were making with what they were doing.

Matt Anderson, who led the project, told BBC Reports : “We’re excited to learn of the power structure inside the female herd and how they interact and intercede with one another.” Predator warning? The team has learned that pregnant females use this low frequency communication to claim to the rest of their herd that they are about to give birth. “We’ve seen that after their long gestation of over 2 years, in the last twelve days we see a manipulation of the low part of the snarl, the low part that we cannot hear. “This we suspect is to pronounce to the remainder of the herd the baby is imminent,” related Dr Anderson. The analysts believe this also warns the elephants to keep an eye out for predators. “You may think a baby calf of three hundred pounds would not be as open to predation as other species,” he asserts. “But packs of hyenas are a massive threat in the wild.” Dr Anderson and his team are continuing to look at info to find out more about this secret elephant language.