More Cool Elephant Skills
Rudyard Kipling didn't mention that elephants can mimic traffic noises. Probably because there weren't quite as many traffic noises in his jungle.
It's called "vocal imitation." Some animals (parrots, songbirds, and humans, for example) will imitate the sounds they hear, even though these sounds aren't in the "normal" range of these animals' communication.
Zoologist Joyce Poole was the first to notice some rather unelephantine noises emanating from a group of semiwild, orphaned elephants in Tsavo National Park, Kenya. She managed to track the sounds to a female named Mlaika. But the ten-year-old's powers of mimicry were so developed that the task wasn't easy.
"I was sometimes unable to distinguish between the distant trucks and Mlaika's calling," said Poole, the scientific director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. "This is what first made me wonder whether she could possibly be imitating the truck sounds."
Poole posits that Mlaika started imitating traffic because she was bored, though she admits that Mlaika might also simply like truck noises. The other elephants in her pack also imitate car and truck noises, including car alarms.
Another African elephant, Calimero, spent several years living with Asian elephants at a zoo in Switzerland, and learned to imitate their chirpings (African elephants don't usually chirp).
Yes, I think elephants are incredibly cool. Why do you ask?
via mirabilis.ca
It's called "vocal imitation." Some animals (parrots, songbirds, and humans, for example) will imitate the sounds they hear, even though these sounds aren't in the "normal" range of these animals' communication.
Zoologist Joyce Poole was the first to notice some rather unelephantine noises emanating from a group of semiwild, orphaned elephants in Tsavo National Park, Kenya. She managed to track the sounds to a female named Mlaika. But the ten-year-old's powers of mimicry were so developed that the task wasn't easy.
"I was sometimes unable to distinguish between the distant trucks and Mlaika's calling," said Poole, the scientific director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. "This is what first made me wonder whether she could possibly be imitating the truck sounds."
Poole posits that Mlaika started imitating traffic because she was bored, though she admits that Mlaika might also simply like truck noises. The other elephants in her pack also imitate car and truck noises, including car alarms.
Another African elephant, Calimero, spent several years living with Asian elephants at a zoo in Switzerland, and learned to imitate their chirpings (African elephants don't usually chirp).
Yes, I think elephants are incredibly cool. Why do you ask?
via mirabilis.ca