African savannah elephants Loxodonta africana have a complex acoustic communication system, but very little is known about their vocal ontogeny. A first approach in ontogenetic studies is to define the call repertoire of specific age groups. Twelve hundred calls of 11 infant elephants from neonatal to 18 months of age recorded at the Vienna Zoo in Austria and at the Daphne Sheldrick's orphanage at the Nairobi National Park, Kenya were analyzed. Six call types were structurally distinguished: the rumble, the bark, the grunt, the roar subdivided into a noisy-, tonal-, and mixed-roar, the snort, and the trumpet. Generally, within-call-type variation was high in all individuals. In contrast to adult elephants, the infants showed no gender-dependent variation in the structure or in the number of call types produced. Male infants, however, were more vocally adamant in their suckle behavior than females. These results give a first insight to the early vocal ontogeny and should promote further ontogenetic studies on elephants. Due to their vocal learning ability in combination with the complex fission-fusion society, elephants could be an interesting model to study the role of imitation in the vocal ontogeny of a nonprimate terrestrial mammal. (c) 2007 Acoustical Society of America.

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   Which, I think, means they spent a lot of time watching the babies in sanctuary and zoo environments, discovered some correlation between call type and behaviour - established, if you will, that they appeared to be communicating specific needs - but need to spend more time watching and recording baby elephants in order to discover if when and how the herd 'language' is picked up and used rather than discrete communication between mother and baby, playmate and playmate etc.

   Sounds almost human doesn't it?  Well, yes it does, and everyone who has spent time watching baby eles will tell you that this sort of discrete communication goes on at an early stage and herd communication is learned with time, just like us.

   So far, so blindingly obvious, book me another ticket to Kenya please say the skeptics.  

   Well, I disagree and am personally fascinated by research like this (especially research which tells me what I think I already know) but aside from personal fascination this research can have a conservation purpose.  It can help prove that those of us who hang around in the elephant world, doing our best to help, aren't just hippy bunny huggers and (that worst of all scientific insults) anthropomorhpologists when we make comparisons between elephants' and human social structures.

   Further, wouldn't it be great for us to know when Pumpui has a bad stomach, needs to eat, needs to play; is just annoyed at Lynchee, is in serious trouble - say she runs off one night like Pleum & Tawan did, imagine knowing exactly what noise a re-assuring mother would make?  OK - slightly different for domestic rescued baby elephants bonded to their mahouts - but take the recent case in India of a baby elephant abandoned by the herd during an Human/Elephant Conflict incident, cared for by forest workers and then apparently re-accepted only to be found dead three weeks later, imagine being able to record the jungle and know the baby had been re-abandoned - OK - so far, so emotional - how does this help conservation?

   Good point, not sure yet, perhaps reducing Human Elephant Conflict by being able to reproduce sub-sonic danger signals around crops?  ...or perhaps merely by playing on emotion and linking elephants to humans by proving they 'learn' a language as they grow.

   We may know this instinctively or through observation but if scientific proof is what upgrades us from bunny hugging fanatics to serious conservation scientists in the eyes of the world and I'm all for it - anyone (with a proven track record) want to come and research in Thailand?  There's a bed for you in the elephant camp!

PS.  Scientific proof - this is what it looks like...



(copyright Angela S. Stoeger-Horwath, Simon Stoeger and Harald. M. Schwammer)