Russ reports on a new study of elephant communication via vibrations transmitted through the ground. It was documented before that elephants could detect these. It was also documented that they could send out infrasonic rumbles which travel faster and farther through the ground than through air. But this is the first study I know of in which there may be hints that this is really a mode of communication between elephants:
For the study, she used recordings of two calls that had been made to warn of hunting lions. One was taped at Etosha, the other in faraway Kenya. They were played at the water hole at different times, using the ButtKicker to convey just the vibrations, stripped of the airborne sound.
"After the first experiment, I could see it was having an effect," she said, "but it took a long time to repeat it and get statistical evidence." With a local call, "the first thing they do is freeze; then they bunch up in the family unit, putting babies in the middle." Before long, the entire group would leave the water hole.
The Kenyan call had a less visible effect. Some elephants froze, but they did not bunch up or quickly leave the water hole.
Colleen Kinzley, the Oakland Zoo's curator and O'Connell-Rodwell's graduate student on the project, suggested that the local alarm might seem more real to the elephants, whereas the one from Kenya was akin to a foreign language.
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