Male elephants harmonize like a barbershop quartet to say “let’s go”

A fascinating new insight into elephant communication has been uncovered, with researchers finding that a group of males will harmonize a rumbling sound, from one to the next, to signal that it’s time for everyone to move on. They liken it to the way a barbershop quartet builds a chorus from one voice to the next.

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Stanford University researchers made this incredible discovery through extensive analysis of elephant sounds collected across 12 years, between 2005 and 2017. They found that when a group of animals were in the one spot, for example, drinking at a watering hole, a senior elephant would make this rumbling sound, and one by one the others would add their own, in a different harmony, all overlapping until every individual got the message. Then, with everyone having acknowledged the “let’s go” message, would make a coordinated move from the watering hole.“It’s very synchronized and ritualized. When one goes high, the other goes low, and they have this vocal space where they’re coordinating,” said the study’s lead author Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, a research associate at Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology.

But there’s more to these endearing singalongs than a musical show of unity. It demonstrates that the gathered males have, much like the females in a herd, a power structure, with the dominant ‘elder’ of the group initiating the chorus, which the others instantly respond to in their own tone. While this study shows it is specific among bulls, similar collective vocalizing has been observed among herds with the most senior females being the first to sing out. So, most likely, this communication has been learned by the males from a young age.

“They grew up in a family where all the female leaders were engaging in this ritual,” O’Connell-Rodwell said. “We think that as they mature and form their own groups, they adapt and use these learned behaviors to coordinate with other males.”

In their research, the scientists found that the first elephant to sing out would have his neighbor join in, with each elephant joining the call just before the preceding rumble had tapered off. This formed a sort of chain-reaction harmony traveling through the group until it reached the last animal.

“We were astonished to find that male elephants, typically considered to have loose social ties, engage in such sophisticated vocal coordination to trigger action,” said O’Connell-Rodwell. “These calls show us that there’s much more going on within their vocal communication than has previously been known.”

The findings reflect two decades of research into elephant communication, with O’Connell-Rodwell having first chanced upon this barbershop-quartet rumbling in 2004, while in the field looking at how the animals’ sounds traveled through the ground beneath them. Then, recordings at the Mushara waterhole in Etosha National Park, Namibia, from 2005 to 2017 were captured, using a suite of technology including microphones buried into soil, to pick up the infrasonic sounds inaudible to human ears.

“I was so excited when I managed to record it,” she recalled. “It was thrilling to realize that these males were using complex vocal coordination like the females were.

It follows on from the groundbreaking discovery that elephants have names for each other, and unlocks crucial new understandings about the role that males play in the tight social network of herds.

“These individuals take on mentoring roles,” O’Connell-Rodwell said. “They care about these young whippersnappers who are very needy and always wanting to be in physical contact. The older males are willing to take them under their wing, to guide them, share resources with them, and partake in their emotional ups and downs.”

The researchers hope this discovery will shed light on the important role males play in the matriarchal society of elephants, and show how poaching can disrupt this tight-knit structure, as well as how animals in captivity can be better served by better understanding the complex relationships at play.

“Our findings not only underscore the complexity and richness of the social lives of male elephants,” O’Connell-Rodwell said, “but also advance our understanding of how they use vocalizations in ritual and coordination and, really, move us closer to the idea of elephant language.”

“We show that elephants are using verbs in the form of this ‘let’s go’ rumble,” she added. “If they are using noun-verb combinations together, that is syntax. That is language.”

The study was published in the journal PeerJ.

Source: Stanford University
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