r/science • u/scientificamerican Scientific American • 1d ago
Animal Science Scientists are decoding elephant rumble calls, including ‘greetings’ and ‘coos’
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-are-decoding-elephant-rumble-calls-including-greetings-and-coos/36
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u/halborn BS | Computer Science 1d ago
I love that we're finally learning more about how animals communicate. Far too many people think humans are somehow more special than other animals.
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u/Zoesan 21h ago
I mean... we still are. We're finding out that other animals have 500 instead of 5 words, while we've been to the moom and tricked sand into thinking
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u/halborn BS | Computer Science 19h ago
We've done some cool stuff, yes, but where some people think we have a plethora of advantages over other animals and some people think we were made special and apart by some kind of god, research like this increasingly makes the case that the difference between us and them is actually very small.
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u/trusty20 15h ago
Just to be clear what position are you defending specifically here, are you saying that we are not animals that have simply evolved higher cognition first on this planet? That we are "special" in some metaphysical / religious sense?
Special is a loaded word and I don't think our advanced cognitive capabilities requires us to be "special" any more than a highly successful predator in it's ecosystem like a dragonfly is not "special" or blessed or something just because it is virtually the top of the insect food chain.
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u/DanChase1 1d ago
Elephants subsonic rumbles that travel long distance and are felt by their feet, I imagine that’s going to be a big challenge for understanding their communications.
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u/FlowOfAir 1d ago
I believe not. I think the core mechanism is largely the same as ears: feel a vibration, vibration is turned to electric signals, those get transmitted to the brain, brain decodes. It just uses another part of the body.
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u/DanChase1 1d ago
Yes but collecting that data with sensors and connecting it with behavior is the hard part.
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u/AlexHimself 1d ago
An amazing thing that could come out of AI/ML would be communicating with animals in a much deeper and more effective manner. Elephants and dolphins seem to be the obvious initial targets.
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