If I Toed You Once, I Toed You a Thousand Times

Here's a fresh bit of research not likely to be dismissed as a mere footnote:

Elephants communicate seismically, by both sending and receiving information with their feet. It's a very surprising insight, one that arose through extensive observation of animal behavior and interaction, and with each additional bit of data, it increasingly appears to be true.

Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, who teaches at Stanford University, observed early in her research that the animals would turn their heads and ears toward sound sources, but she did not know what to make of their tendency to stop in their tracks while walking, perhaps only to make very strange but seemingly deliberate movements with a front foot. O'Connell-Rodwell eventually made the connection to vibration-based insect communication behaviors that had been documented.

As announced in an American Physiological Society press release, Dr. O’Connell-Rodwell recently published work draws some fascinating conclusions about "elecomm" (the freshly coined phrase for elephant communication).

The soil as a medium for sound waves can permit sound to travel much farther than it can in travel in air. Her tests, which included playing recorded sounds through the ground only, resulted in response in the elephants she was monitoring. Further, the elephants appeared to comprehend and pass along the message. Playbacks of alarm calls recorded by local elephants resulted in defensive behavior and responding calls.

The Elephant's Secret Sense is the recently published outcome of Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell's efforts and observations; this APS podcast features the author discussing her work, and you can check out videos and learn more about how she has kept her ear to the ground for fascinating discoveries at the Utopia Scientific website.

Photo courtesy of nickandmel2006, via Wikimedia Commons