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Study

Wild elephant (Loxodonta africana) breeding herds respond to artificially transmitted seismic stimuli

O'Connell-Rodwell, Caitlin E.; Wood, Jason D.; Rodwell, Timothy C.; Puria, Sunil; Partan, Sarah R.; Keefe, Robert; Shriver, Deborah; Arnason, Byron T.; Hart, Lynette A.

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2006

Peer-reviewedfield experimentwild

What they did

Alarm calls were converted into ground vibration and transmitted through the earth at a waterhole, with no airborne sound, while herd behaviour was filmed.

Studied in
Loxodonta africana
Sample size
wild breeding herds at a waterhole in Namibia

What they found

Herds responded to the seismic-only stimulus with alerting and defensive bunching.

What it means

The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.

How the authors put it

Elephants detect and respond to conspecific signals travelling through the ground as well as through the air.

How NatureHQ reads it

The reason to care about this is that it changes the range over which elephants can communicate: seismic waves travel further than low-frequency sound in some conditions. How the signal is detected — through the feet and trunk, and possibly through bone conduction to the ear — is still being worked out, so "elephants hear with their feet" is a shorthand rather than a description.

Limitations

  • Field playback with limited replication.
  • Separating a purely seismic response from residual airborne cues is difficult outdoors.
  • The detection pathway remains partly unresolved.

The experiment, explained

  • Playing an elephant a call through the ground instead of the air

    Elephant calls travel through the ground as well as the air. Do elephants notice the part that arrives underfoot?

What this study is used for on NatureHQ

One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.

Finding the paper

Published by: Springer journalsPublished in a Springer journal.

doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0136-2

Checked against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.

NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.