Elephants can hear through their feet

[Guest guest]

Courtesy of Veggie Jews.

 

Researcher says ability more useful to animals in wild.

 

Patricia Yollin, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Saturday, May 19, 2007

 

Once a month, Caitlin O'Connell has a date with an elephant. The

Stanford research associate lives in San Diego and the pachyderm

resides in Oakland, but they don't let geography interfere with their

relationship. It's a question of science.

 

O'Connell has discovered that elephants can hear with their feet.

They are specialists in seismic communication, relying upon sound

waves that travel within the surface of the ground instead of through

the air.

 

She's been working with the animals since 1992, when she went to

Africa for nine months and stayed for 14 years. Donna, an Oakland Zoo

resident, joined her wild counterparts as a research subject in 2002.

 

" It's been a very interesting voyage, " O'Connell said.

 

She'll be talking about that journey tonight at the Oakland Zoo and

Wednesday at UC Davis, where she received a doctorate in ecology.

 

" I'm hoping this will spur a lot more study with large mammals, " said

the 41-year-old O'Connell, whose book, " The Elephant's Secret Sense:

The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa, " came out in March.

 

She said most study of seismic communication among animals has been

limited to small rodents and insects -- a world that O'Connell, with

a master's degree in entomology, knew something about before she went

to Africa and stumbled upon elephants.

 

" It was certainly serendipity that started this whole thing, " said

O'Connell, who was asked, when she volunteered at Etosha National

Park in Namibia 15 years ago, if she wanted to work on a three-year

program on elephants.

 

" It took me two seconds to say yes, " said O'Connell, co-director with

her husband of Utopia Scientific, a nonprofit devoted to

conservation.

 

She was supposed to find ways to keep elephants out of farmers'

fields. While observing them, she started to notice certain odd

things.

 

" Normally, they would hold their big ears out like a parabola and

scan back and forth, " O'Connell said. " But to detect distant noise

and vocalizations, they'd freeze and lean forward and put weight on

their front legs. Sometimes they'd even lift up a front foot. All of

them would do this at the same time -- it was too coordinated to be a

coincidence. "

 

The behavior sometimes occurred when another herd approached or a

ranger drove by in his vehicle.

 

" On a most fundamental level, the research is showing elephants have

a whole modality for communicating that we haven't thought about, "

O'Connell said.

 

Her findings could contribute to elephant conservation and to a better

relationship between people and pachyderms.

 

Full story:

http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2007/

05/19/BAGPNPTMPG 56.DTL