Joesph Soltis and his team of researchers use collars mounted in elephant's collars to collect vocal data from six female African elephants living in Disney's Animal Kingdom. The difficulty in recording low-frequency calls on wild elephant populations make it difficult to studyshort-distance communication and spontaneously occurring vocal exchanges between individuals. These researchers wanted to determine whether low-frequency vocalizations could help scientist's understand the social context of the calls and whether they are related to reproductive behavior.
There was strong evidence gathered from the vocal data to show females did not randomly produce low-frequency rumbles, but were almost twice as likely to produce a rumble after another group member rumbled. A relationship with another call had an extremely strong impact on vocal response, while dominance rank and reproductive state did not have any affect. Females were much more likely to 'respond' to a rumble made by a partner it had the longest relationship with, compared to those it had not known as long. Elephants also were shown to rumble in certain social contexts; such as when animals were out of contact, when they reunited, or when they were close to each other.
All of this data shows the wide spectrum of uses the African elephants have for their low-frequency rumble call, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of research that still has to be done to help understand the subtle differences and meaning between the different calls, and also to understand the other methods elephants use for communication.
Joesph Soltis, Kirstin Leong, and Anne Savage. "African Elephant Vocal Communication I: antiphonal calling behaviour among affiliated females." Animal Behaviour. 70 (2004):579-587.
Very interesting. Do you know anything about the continuing research? What are researchers doing to understand the differences and meanings between the calls? Do males also use this sort of communication or is it specific to females only?
ReplyDeletePosted by Bethany Rappleyea
I absolutely adore elephants, and really enjoyed reading this article. Do you know how the researchers overcame the difficulty of recording the low-frequency calls? Why were the females more likely to produce a rumble after another group member did? Do the researchers have any ideas for future experiments they would do?
ReplyDelete-Emily Crete
Do you know anything about the social structure of elephant groups? I am curious as to whether they sick together as family units and how many elephants would form one group?
ReplyDeleteposted by: Jess Bouchard (1)
Really interesting! Do the males make these low rumbles more often or for any other purpose? Or is it just a female trait? It's interesting that this was studied at Animal Kingdom. It makes it easier to study them, but it would be more interesting to study wild herds to get a more accurate picture, don't you think?
ReplyDeletePosted by Christine Rega
This article is very interesting. I have never heard or research done with communication with elephants. Did they only test females? Or did they test males as well? Is this the only place they have ever tested for elephant communication?
ReplyDelete-Samantha Babcock
Cool. It sounds like the rumble call is sort of a "hello." Is this call similar to any other elephant calls that are used for other purposes?
ReplyDelete-Sarah Benjamin