Also seismic waves in the communication of elephants

2004/06/09 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Zoologia

The elephant is known to have a complex communication system, but who had to say that it uses the same kind of waves that use earthquakes to expand? Well, the study of three African elephants indicates that the sounds produced by the elephant are not only propagated by air but also by the earth in the form of Rayleigh waves.

On the one hand, they received the sounds obtained by the elephants through microphones, and on the other, they placed a line of geophones of 175 meters to detect the waves that produced in the soil. It seems that the waves generated by the elephants extend along the ground to 2.2 km, while along the air the message reaches a kilometer or at most a return.