Elephants are smart creatures, there’s no doubt about it.
And just when you think you know every amazing fact there is to know, biologists go ahead and discover something else that will totally blow your mind.
Like the way they can communicate without human beings being able to hear a thing.
Scientists say they use infrasound, which are a frequency too low for our ears to detect.
Elephants are able to create it using their giant organs, and the sound registers with other elephants – even those far away through dense forest.
A 2012 paper detailed how elephants made the sounds and say it’s similar to how we produce human speech or singing.
“These low-frequency sounds, termed ‘infrasounds,’ can travel several kilometers, and provide elephants with a ‘private’ communication channel that plays an important role in elephants’ complex social life. Their frequencies are as low as the lowest notes of a pipe organ.”
That said, scientists haven’t been sure how they were making such low sounds.
Recently, a team of researchers removed the larynx from a deceased elephant and blew air through it in a lab. By manipulating the vocal folds, the recreating low-frequency vibrations that characterize infrasounds.
The elephants achieve this by singing, and the size of their larynx means they can reach those super low notes – even if we can’t hear them.
This is a trait that (in different frequencies) is shared across a majority of animals.
One day soon, AI might mean we can not only hear and understand, but communicate with animals in their own language as well.
What a world.
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