Translation services for elephants available
 

Trunk call

A team of boffins has come up with a way of translating the communication techniques of elephants so that humans can understand them.

Elephants possess a vibrant repertoire of communication techniques, including hundreds of calls and gestures that convey specific meanings and change depending on the context. Different elephant populations also exhibit culturally learned behaviours unique to their particular group.

Elephant behaviours are so complex that even the boffins may struggle to keep up with them all.

Joyce Poole, co-founder and scientific director of ElephantVoices, a nonprofit science and conservation organisation and co-creator of the new ethogram, has built an easily searchable public database with her husband and research partner Petter Granli.

The Elephant Ethogram currently includes more than 500 behaviours depicted through nearly 3,000 annotated videos, photographs and audio files. The entries encompass the majority, if not all, of typical elephant behaviours, which Poole and Granli gleaned from more than 100 references spanning more than 100 years, with the oldest records dating back to 1907.

https://fudzilla.com/news/53016-tran...-for-elephants