Study
The social contexts of some very low frequency calls of African elephants
Poole, J. H.; Payne, K.; Langbauer, W. R.; Moss, C. J.
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 1988
Very low frequency calls, much of whose energy lies below the range of human hearing, were recorded from individually known wild elephants and matched against the social situation in which each was produced.
- Studied in
- Loxodonta africana
- Sample size
- identified wild elephants in Amboseli, Kenya
Elephants produce a repertoire of infrasonic calls associated with distinct situations, including contact between separated groups, oestrus, and the state that males enter when in musth.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Low-frequency calling is a substantial and previously unrecognised part of elephant social communication.
How NatureHQ reads it
Carried partly for the fact and partly for what it says about observation. Elephants had been watched closely for decades by people who could not hear a large fraction of what they were saying, and the calls only became a subject when the recording equipment could reach below human hearing. Low frequencies also travel further, which is why this matters ecologically: it makes coordination between groups that are kilometres apart a possibility rather than a puzzle.
- Associating a call with a situation is correlational; this study contains no playback.
- One population.
- Propagation distances in real habitat depend heavily on ground and weather conditions.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Springer journalsPublished in a Springer journal.
Checked against Crossref 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 2026-08-31.