Elephant Voices

Category: 6. Behavior, Elephant Photos | Date: Mar 24 2008 | By: admin

Some of our contacts were very enthusiastic at the possibility of learning more about elephant behavior via our blog, so I am going to continue to share some elephant behavior with you.

As I mentioned, our new photo database means that we can easily search on a specific behavior and find all the images that we have of that behavior. This new system is essential for updating our visual and tactile database on www.elephantvoices.org.

The other day a colleague sent me a photograph of elephants engaged in Floppy-Running. I knew that we had even better images in our database and found them with a quick entry of the behavior. The pictures taken in January this year are so lovely that I thought I would share them with you and take the opportunity to write a bit about Floppy-Running.

The term was originally coined by Cynthia Moss to describe the loose, floppy running gait of a playful elephant. In Amboseli Floppy-Running is most often observed when elephants have had plenty to eat and are leaving the swamps at the end of the day. Playful behavior is often contagious, and though juveniles and calves are the most likely Floppy-Runners, adult females sometimes lose all sense of decorum and join in. I have laughed aloud as I watched several families Floppy-Run across the plains to the tune of a cacophony of pulsated play trumpets. The elephants go all loose and floppy, shaking their lowered heads from side-to-side, allowing their trunk to flop about, their ears to flap wildly against their necks and curling their tails up high.

Have a look at the sequence of beautiful images taken by Petter as a family Floppy-Run across the open plain. A wonderful, funny sight…

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Category: 2. Field News Kenya, 6. Behavior, Elephant Sounds | Date: Mar 18 2008 | By: admin

To study elephant communication it is crucial to understand the body language of elephants - for these are clues to what might happen next. Petter and I are pretty good at anticipating what elephants are about to do and have built up a database on our website ElephantVoices, where you can learn all about the signals, postures and gestures of elephants. We are currently updating this database so you may want to keep an eye out for new additions.

One of many important cues we use is watching for listening behavior. Since elephants can communicate over long distances, and since some of their communication is inaudible to us (but audible to the elephants), this behavior is a cue that the listening elephant has heard something, or someone, and might call in answer.

So what are the cues we use to tell that an elephant is listening? An elephant rarely stands stock still except when listening or resting; usually some part of the body, ears, trunk, tail is in motion. A resting elephant relaxes it’s head and ears allowing its head to hang below its shoulders and its ears to flop forward. A listening elephant, on the other hand, stands with its head raised and its ears lifted and slightly extended. The body and extremities of a listening elephant suddenly stop moving, and it simultaneously raises its head and stiffens its ears. Sometimes an elephant may turn its head from side to side in an attempt to localize a sound.

Have a look at these photographs of listening elephants.

Three-Holes listens.

A juvenile female and two calves raise their heads suddenly as they hear a sound of interest.

Beckwith listens after calling to her family.

An adult female listens, and turns her head from side to side attempting to localize a distant call. Put on your headphones and listen to the sound linked below. You will hear a distant elephant calling, followed by an answer from the listening female. Play sound. Hopefully it works for you - we are currently having some problems setting up media files on the blog.

Musth male, Solonga, listens in for the sounds of distant females in his search for mates.

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Category: 1. General News, 2. Field News Kenya, Elephant Photos | Date: Mar 07 2008 | By: admin

Petter and I have been making real progress on a project that we have wanted to accomplish for a long time. Inspired by recent WildlifeDirect donations we bought ACDC Pro 2 - a photograph manager and database. For years we have struggled to locate particular photographs among the tens of thousands of images we have in our collection. Now we are going through all of them, putting them into categories and giving them key words so that we can easily search for an image and locate it later. This is especially important for updating our online database on elephant displays and behaviors, but also for putting together lectures and even for bringing you a specific image to illustrate an event, behavior or individual.

Furthermore, we have recently completed a searchable elephant ID database for the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. Just now I was struggling to remember the names of two elephants in a photograph taken at some distance. I could just make out that one had a flap-cut on her right ear. So, I keyed in “female, flap-cut middle right ear” and searched through the 15 or so individuals who came up and, presto: the two females were Kaliope and Keely of the KB family! I do love it when things work!

We will continue to upload photos to WildlifeDirect - hopefully for you to enjoy.

Thank you Muriel T for your 50$ donation!

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Category: 1. General News, Support Appeals | Date: Mar 03 2008 | By: admin

New versions of software for photo and video editing are high on our priority list right now. They are essential to our educational outreach, including for this blog on WildlifeDirect, for our website, ElephantVoices, and for lectures.

And after spending a couple of months in a workshop in Nairobi our research vehicle will soon be ready again for Kenya’s rather bumpy roads and the bush.

We are extremely grateful for contributions towards the substantial costs of these two items. We know that there are so many good causes out there worth supporting - and we hope that you make ours one of them.

Meanwhile, we thank Keith M. for an open donation of USD 25.

Best wishes, Petter and Joyce

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