Researchers at San Diego Zoo have been studying what has been described as the "secret language" of elephants. They have been monitoring communications between animals that cannot be heard by human ears. The elephant's trumpeting call will be familiar to most people, but the animals also emit growls. Their growls, however, are only partly audible; two-thirds of the call is at frequencies that are too low to be picked up by our hearing. To learn more about the inaudible part of the growl, the team attached a microphone sensitive to these low frequencies and a GPS tracking system to eight of the zoo's female elephants. The researchers could then correlate the noises the animals were making with what they were doing. The team has already learned that pregnant females use this low frequency communication to announce to the rest of their herd that they are about to give birth. The researchers believe that this also warns the elephants to look out for predators. Dr Anderson and his team are continuing to analyse data in order to learn more about this secret elephant language.
This is a good point, MissJane, yet scientific research is also a public need. There are people who will continue doing rsearch without any financial support. Those governments and nations will win, who will spend more money on learning about the world. This is the way of a civilized life. Due to observation and the power of reasoning Homo Sapiens became people. On the other hand, there are some practical implications - imagine the day when we learn the languages of animal communication.
Well, don't understand me in a wrong way, but though I'm very glad that science is not at a standstill and more and more discoveries are being made, but it just surprises me how much money the researchers are donated annually! Of course, scientific surveys have always been foreground, but these huge sums of money might be spent on various public needs.
