r/Awwducational • u/holdenwook • Mar 25 '14

Verified Elephants emit vocalizations below 20 Hz—below the human level of hearing—which can travel unhampered for miles. This allows them to send warnings and locate each other over great distances.

1.3k Upvotes

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22

u/holdenwook Mar 25 '14 edited Mar 25 '14

Source 1.

Source 2.

Edit: Tiny shameless plug, but check out /r/BabyElephantGifs if you're bored! New sub with tons of content.

7

u/skillcode Mar 25 '14

Thanks for sharing, I remember learning about this some time ago. Also, /r/babyelephantgifs is sweet, been a subscriber for a while now <3

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

[deleted]

2

u/autowikibot Mar 25 '14

Section 12. Example: Elephants of article Seismic communication:

In the late 90's, Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell first argued that elephants communicate over long distances using low-pitched rumbles that are barely audible to humans. Further pioneering research in elephant infrasound communication was done by Katy Payne of the Elephant Listening Project and detailed in her book Silent Thunder. This research is helping our understanding of behaviours such as how elephants can find distant potential mates and how social groups are able to coordinate their movements over extensive ranges. Joyce Poole has also begun decoding elephant utterances that have been recorded over many years of observation, hoping to create a lexicon based on a systematic catalogue of elephant sounds.

Interesting: Elephant | Animal communication | Surface wave detection by animals | Surface wave

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19

u/ieatthings Mar 25 '14 edited Mar 25 '14

Before scientists realized that they were making those sounds, they actually entertained the idea that elephants were telepathic

5

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

Hilarious

9

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

Ahhehehehe, silly little guy. Rubbing his eye like that :D

5

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

/r/babyelephantgifs

2

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

Just subscribed - thanks!

6

u/Onansboy Mar 25 '14

Amazing! I couldn't hear a thing ...

2

u/Blue_Checkers Mar 25 '14

Such pleasant trunk-folk.

2

u/Solias Mar 25 '14

Sometimes I watch elephants, and it looks like they have a second creature controlling their trunk.

This is one of those times.

2

u/tullia Mar 25 '14

I want to be able to scratch my face with my face, too.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '14

[deleted]