← Global Rumblings Podcast
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- [00:18]
A
Hello and welcome to Global Sanctuary for Elephants podcast. Global Rumblings. Global Sanctuary for Elephants, or GSE for short, is a non profit organization with a mission to create vast, safe spaces for captive elephants where they are able to heal fish physically and emotionally, often from very traumatic pasts. I'm your host, Nadia Mazzarati, and I'll be taking you to the lush jungle of the Mato Grosso region in central Brazil, home of GEC's initial project, Elephant Sanctuary Brazil, where four Mizuan circus elephants from across South America live their best lives. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Global Rumblings podcast. It's lovely to have you with us again this week. We are still in our Rethinking Elephants series, taking a step back, day to day happenings at the sanctuary, taking a broader look on elephants. And today we're going to kick off the larger conversation of communications. How do elephants communicate? What can we hear? What can't we hear? So let's say hi to Kat and Scott Blaze, co founders of Global Sanctuary for Elephants. Hi, you two.
- [01:23]
B
Hey, Nadja.
- [01:24]
C
Hey, Nadja, how are you?
- [01:25]
A
I'm fine. Very unsuccessfully, I was looking for a slug which nipped the top buds of a few sunflower seedlings. So when we finish this recording, I'm going to go out into the garden with a torch and look for the little.
- [01:39]
C
No, Nadia, no, no, don't do anything horrible.
- [01:42]
B
She means, she means flashlight.
- [01:45]
C
Flashlight. That kind of torch. My goodness. Oh, I see.
- [01:48]
A
No, no, no. Flashlight, torch. Translation. I pick them up and throw them at the end of the garden. I throw them over to the neighbor. Now some Germans to put beer out and they go into the beer and get drowned. No, I don't like that. Okay, I'm just going to pick up the little sod and take it away from my. From my sunflower plants.
- [02:04]
C
No American torching. No, no. Putting them.
- [02:08]
A
Flashlights. Flashlights.
- [02:10]
C
Okay,
- [02:13]
A
okay. So I said in the introductory, we're going to be talking about communication and there's audible communication. And in previous podcasts, actually in the last podcast, when we talked about lady and her choice to remain solitary, you said that just because she wasn't choosing to physically get involved with the other elephants, it doesn't mean that she was not in constant communication with them. And also you mentioned in previous podcasts as well, infrasonic communication and seismic communication. And also maybe a little bit woowoo vibes and energy. But today I thought we can kick off first of all with audible communication. And so I will get Roland, our wonderful podcast editor, to add A soundtrack of Mara squeaking and Hana rumbling in case listeners do not know what a rumble sounds like. So that was a squeak from Mara and a rumble from Hana. And you have in other podcasts, said you can hear the girls rumbling to each other. They've got squeak parties. Rumble parties. So what exactly is a rumble?
- [03:55]
C
Lovely, lovely, lovely sound. Cat. You can go on the technical side of it. I'm just gonna say it's a sound that just makes the whole world feel good.
- [04:09]
B
It's. I. We've talked about it before. It sounds like a very loud cat rumble. I mean, a cat purr. Now I'm making cats rumble.
- [04:19]
A
That's a little earlier. Cat. Cats rumbling. Okay, play on words.
- [04:24]
B
Um, but it is a sound that is made through their larynx, and it carries two different ways. It carries audibly, and then it carries seismically, and it carries through the ground further than it does through the air. But as Scott said, it is this even as a person. I mean, yes, elephants are much more sensitive and they pick up vibrations through their feet. But even as a person, when we were in the barn in Tennessee and the girls would rumble, I mean, you can feel it in the entire building. You know, it does actually. Like, if there's a lot of them and they start trumpeting and rumbling, it will slightly shake the walls of the building. It's only polycarbonate, so it's not like walls. Walls. But, I mean, it does. You can feel it. And if you watch them, you can see it, like, right above between their eyes, there's an area of their forehead that vibrates when they do it, so you can actually see it. And then if you put your hand on that, you can really. Because some of them, like, you know, when you touch that area when they're rumbling, and then you can feel it in your hand and it travels through your body. But, yeah, it's quite something.
- [05:40]
A
And you said in. I think it was our previous podcast, you said that people often equate rumbling with. With happiness. But then in a podcast, you said that when Gigi called the other elephants over, when Pocha had passed, she rumbled as well. So it isn't that easy. It doesn't mean only happiness. Do we actually know what it exactly means? Probably not.
- [06:03]
C
It's like saying, what is laughter in a human? We use those skin. What does it mean to cross your arms as a human? It could be, I'm tired. It could be frustrated. It could be so many different things. You know, you have to look at the connective tissue. What else is going on. And that's the way to all of visual, auditory communication is a lot of it is this way. What is it going on around that? What is the tone of the sound? You can say, you know, help playfully or you can say help fearfully. You know, the person doesn't need more connective words to know the difference in what those sounds are. You know, as Kat just said, you know, it's a. It's a vocalization originating there in the larynx. It is them talking. And just like when we talk or a dog bark, you know, there's going to be different elements to it. There's different intonations, there's different energy around it, different frequencies with those rumbles, and all of that's going to have a different meaning. There are some groups working on communication. What specifically do those vocalizations mean? But I don't think it's as easy as that. You know, just like when our language, not one. One word, doesn't have just one meaning. You know, laughter is not just one thing. Laughter can be funny. Laughter can also be nervous, you know, so we're trying to understand the language, and people are using AI now to try to understand elephant's language and put something specific to it. How do you put something specific to something that is so dynamic, such as language and communication? You know, it is much more nuanced than that, but we want to use a system that is going to make it very straightforward of this rumble means this. Well, not always. And we can't always say when it is or isn't, because we don't have that capacity, at least not at this point. We don't even have that capacity in humans to always say with certainty, you know, what language or what. What vocalization or what sound it is that we're making means specifically and exactly what that means.
- [07:54]
B
I think that you can probably use those types of programs to get some sort of detail. Like when we talked about Guichi calling the other girls, There is a type of rumble that is deeper, louder. It almost sounds like as if you were looking at them that their mouth would be open more. It's not, but that's kind of the resonance it has. And I'm assuming it is because it carries further and they understand way more about that than we do. So I think you can probably get differentiations in rumbles that give suggestions of the directions it's going. Like the insecure rumble tends to be quieter. You know, it is a little softer, as you would kind of expect. You know, when you think about somebody who's insecure. And when they ask for something, how they're a little more timid and quiet about things sometimes, you know, so there are, I think, differences that science can pick up on, but there's those intangible things that just by recording and not seeing the interaction and not knowing the relationships and not witnessing the scenario around what's going on, make it so that, as Scott said, there's just some things you are not going to be able to grasp just. Just from a computer trying to figure out what the deal is.
- [09:25]
C
And I think it's brilliant. I didn't want to sound like I'm dissing what's happening with communication and understanding communication using AI. I think it's brilliant. It'll be fascinating to understand more. You know, as Cat saying, a very.
- [09:33]
B
I think science is bad.
- [09:35]
C
No, I did not say that. I think torching bugs is that, but only in the torching in my sense language. You know, there's so much that goes into it.
- [09:44]
A
I've got this image of that film Shrek now. I watched the other day, and he goes out with a. With a torch as well. Oh, my gosh, I'm getting sidetracked. So when you say seismic and infrasonic communication, is that then what you meant in a podcast, Scott, when you said about lady, that she would, like, look towards the other elephants, like, raise her head, look towards the other elephants, and you would observe her doing that, or vice versa, Other elephants looking across between the gates to a different yard, but you as a human hadn't actually heard anything. So would that then possibly be this type of seismic and infrasonic communication that we cannot hear? I think humans can hear from, I think 20 hertz. Starting from 20 hertz. So everything below that, we can't.
- [10:31]
C
Yeah, I mean, the reality is we don't know, you know, what was going on. You know, we can speculate. We aren't measuring those frequencies. You know, we don't have that equipment out here, so we don't know, you know, what was actually going on. But, you know, we could speculate that, yes, it was infrastructure communication or seismic communication, but we can also speculate that it was, ooh, you know, is it just a vibe? You know, something feels weird and you look out the window, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean because you absolutely heard something, you know, or saw something. It just, you know, we have those vibes. We have those. Those weird sensations, and it could just be part of that sensation that she, you know, looking in that direction. We don't know, you Know, we can speculate a lot, but we definitely did see times when there she was definitively communicating with them with rumbles. Could hear them rumbling back and forth at a frequency that was audible to us. What's happening behind the scenes behind the veil of elephant communication? We don't really know.
- [11:25]
A
We don't know. So do African elephants rumble as well?
- [11:28]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [11:30]
C
They make. They generally make fewer of the squeaky, raspberry type noises, although some do make some noises like that.
- [11:39]
B
I was going to say, unless you're Kenya. Unless you make like all sorts of absurd noises that we hadn't heard before that were amazingly awesome, but. And Tangy had some noises her cute.
- [11:53]
C
Yeah, they'll do percolating, they'll do clicky noises. They will do other, you know, but they don't do as many, generally speaking as, you know, the, the squeaks and. And little raspberry noises that, that Asians do.
- [12:04]
A
So what do the squeaks and the little raspberries mean, then? The little squeaks. We had that just now in the, in the recording that what is. What is a squeak? And I think there's a trunk pop as well.
- [12:14]
C
What specifically does it mean? We'll have to ask AI and go back to the researchers.
- [12:19]
A
Or do you notice specific. Or have you observed specific situations when they. So when would I mean a classic elephant noise? I think if you would ask somebody is. Or trumpet. So do you observe or have you observed which situations an elephant is more likely to trumpet or more likely to squeak?
- [12:40]
C
I have a question for you.
- [12:41]
B
Yeah.
- [12:42]
C
Do you think this. Do you think with their language, with the like, absolute communication, if you're losing, like, words, tangible words, do you think that rumbling has more meaning, more, I'm going to say generic meaning, more defined meaning than the other squeaks. And the squeaks is more playful vocalization, hooting, hollowing, silly playfulness. But do you think the squeaks have something different? And I said because I think the rumble is consistent across the board. Not the same type of rumble, but rumbling is more consistent than the squeaks.
- [13:17]
B
Yeah, I think rumbling and trumpets are definitely more. Everybody does those. And I think the other noises tend to be almost elephants, individual elephant specific. And I don't mean that. That no other elephant can make them, but like Mara's type of. I don't know that I would call it a squeak. It's very specific to her. We don't have another elephant that makes it. I don't know that I've heard another elephant that makes it. You know, there's raspberries which I've definitely heard other elephants do it, but it's essentially Maya's go to noise. You know, it's just what she does. Hana has her really high pitched squeak, but she doesn't do a lot of other noises. You know, she does rumbles, trumpets. We've had elephants that do what we refer to as whale song, but that was like their only extra noise. They don't do, you know, squeaks. And Gigi's a little different. She definitely throws multiple noises in there. Matter of fact, Sarah was watching a video the other day and she's like, what would you even call that noise? I'm like, I have no idea. I'm like, hatt you label the weird noises that Giza Mina makes? I don't know. So I think those noises, like elephants tend to have one of those noises that they really like to make or can make and they don't really generally do others. So I'm not sure what the specific is. If it's like their party noise, their little party trick, their whatever it is that works for them. And then the rumbles and trumpets are definitely more of that universal overall communication that has a different type of messaging that is inlaid in all of that.
- [15:15]
C
I'm going to go back to the science element again because I think it's an important element with this discussion from our side is remembering that we're coming from. Elephants have all been raised differently, they've all been raised away from family. You know, they've all been ways many times alone. So how much language do you learn when you're alone? You know, so a lot of the studies that are going to be done, and maybe that's where we see more consistency, is you have a group, a family in Africa that has lived together for generations. You know, their language might be much more defined than what we're seeing. And you know, with those elephants that have come from all different locations. Again, Mara basically raised with African elephants, or not inside the raised with, but lived with African elephants. You know, Anya, who was alone except for what she heard from poaching Gizamina and Tammy across the way. You know, so what, what are we, what are they learning? What is instinctual? What is just noise that doesn't have a specific tangible word attached to it or meaning attached to it because they haven't been raised within that, they haven't been taught that language and we don't know how that is interfered with. You know, in, in, in a captive world.
- [16:30]
A
Yeah, I had to think about sort of spontaneously like when children learn to learn to speak, they can. Sometimes they. They scream or they're very quiet and it's sort of. They're testing their voice. They're sort of, well, literally finding their voices and trying out various sounds. So maybe that's with elephants as well, especially, as you say, coming from a captive environment, just literally learning and finding their voice. Have you any, maybe stories you can share? I don't know from Tennessee, whether any elephants came who were very, I don't know, emotionally shut off and closed, and then who maybe became more vocal as their journey of healing began and continued. Do they actually literally find their voice again?
- [17:21]
C
Yeah, and I think that's good, you know, to. To with certainty that has happened. I guess that goes back to, is the voice a celebration or the voice means something and that's what a lot of signing into. It's not necessarily that they don't make noises, but what are those voices and what do those words mean? What do those sounds mean? Are you going to have more consistency with a wild herd than you're going to have in this herd that has been raised separately? But as far as finding their voice and finding the vocalizations and making different noises, Geisha is always trying to experiment with the noise, I think. You know, she does these weird little. I don't know what you want to call them, but she just seems to experiment. She keeps them really quiet for a while, and then later on they'll come out.
- [17:56]
B
But it's awesome because you can see her face move, like, when she's trying to figure out how to make them. She, like, tightens the corners of her mouth or, like, moves, and you can see, like, in her face that she's really thinking about it and trying to. And it's like, what's going to come out of there? I mean, she's just. She's adorable. Sorry. Go ahead, Scott.
- [18:17]
C
Yeah, so, yes, with certainty, more trumpets, more rumbles, deeper trumpets. Of course, they vocalize more and, you know, develop different types of trumpets and intonations. And, you know, sometimes when we hear the noises off in the distance at night and the rumbles and the bellows and it's really loud and these really. What would be like a fearful trumpet or like a startled trumpet, you know, we wait for a few minutes to see what's going to follow. And a lot of times this is that connective tissue we talked about, which. What it means and what's happening. Sometimes we wait for the little deflated trumpet of Hana, you know, and the deflated trumpet of Hana is This trumpet that starts high and it's like a trombone deflating, you know. And it's just this, this. It's different. It's different. But that's a playful, that's a playful trumpet for her. So, you know, initially, where are we at with the vocalizations from? We're listening in from the outside. What are we looking for? Is looking for some of those nuances in those vocalization to figure out what the vibe is, what the energy is around that without having to know exactly what happened. Doesn't matter if it's an anta or if they just startled each other, you know, anto. A taper. Sorry, not anta. Or if they just startled each other. But we look for those nuances of the vocalizations for us to have an understanding of what is the energy of the moment.
- [19:36]
B
And every elephant is individual. You know, he mentions whether it's a taper or something else. I mean, we got to know fairly quickly that Hannah was the boy who cried wolf. You know, she would trip it like the world was ending and we would race down on the four wheeler and go see what was going on and there'd be a taper. You know, we're like, really? And she's like, thank you, you saved me. And then she would do it again and we'd race down and we would find her like this party in the bushes. And we're like. You apparently do not understand that for most elephants, the noises you're making are like, oh my God, the world is ending noises. So it's also very individual with the elephant and knowing their communication and what they get excited about and the level of excitement and so on. So I mean, there's always, as we joke, you can't ask a question about elephants and get like a 10 second straight answer with almost anything. You know, you could always preface all of the answers with, well, it's complicated because nothing's black and white that way with them at least if you are actually trying to understand and read them properly. I mean, it's just, it's like people not black and white by any stretch.
- [20:59]
C
And it's not black and white with us either though, you know, and I think that's such an important thing is, you know, whether it be a dog or cat or human, you know, a horse, it's not, not black and white either. You know, we understand that all the grays of human world. Not all of them, some of them. But we don't always understand the gray zone with elephants, no pun intended. But the, the. Sorry, that was not your joke. We don't always understand the gray in other animals. We want to make it tangible. We want to make it really clear. We want to make it easy to understand. Well, there's not much in our world that's really easy to understand, you know, and especially when it comes to language and expression and vocalization, emotional expression is even more complicated.
- [21:41]
B
And the weird thing for me is, again, when it comes to people, that's completely acceptable. Like, you have a friend who comes in and you ask what's going on? You know, something's wrong with them. They don't really want to talk about it. So you don't. You don't know what's wrong. You just know something's wrong, and that's okay. It happens all the time in people, and it's totally a normal thing and totally understandable. But it seems weird that people, like, want a solid definition of what's going on with the elephants all the time, even though they don't even speak the same language. So there is more of a barrier between understanding them. But there's almost this, like, it's not okay if we don't know what they're thinking and what's going on. And even though we don't get that with our own species. So it's always a little weird that way, that people expect to have this deeper level of. Of understanding of like, every moment and every bit of language and every nuance when we don't have that with anyone.
- [22:46]
A
Yeah, weird. It's true. True. So you can then presumably, probably going to answer my own question. You can distinguish between all the elephants at the sanctuary. So in the middle of the night, if there's a rumble or trumpet, you would be able to. To distinguish who's who?
- [23:05]
C
Not always. Not always. There are some certain vocalizations and again, intonations that are specific to one or the other. I think some of the rumbles would be much more difficult to tell. There's again, intonations within some of those rumbles that are very similar.
- [23:18]
B
Bambi is a very specific one. She has. There's just something. I don't know how to even explain it. But Bambi's rumbles are almost always identifiable. Again, all the individual noises. Mara sounds like Mara, Gigi sounds like Gigi. Maya and Gigi have a slight crossover with raspberry noises. But the rumbles themselves, I think at night, it's more of the scenarios that we're used to. You can kind of tell where the noises are coming from, and we know who's generally in what area? But it's more of the. We know pretty much every night that Mara and Hannah are going to lose each other. One's going to lay down to go to sleep, the other one's going to go off in graze and somebody wakes up first, usually Hannah, and wants to find Mara. So she makes her big deep rumble and sometimes she'll trumpet. And we know it's her because of the scenario and because of. It's just a very typical orderly noise that happens. And then we have to wait to make sure we hear when she wakes Mara up. And Mara's first initial squeaks are very tired sounding and literally like, I'm over here, thanks, you woke me up. And then they both rumble together and trumpet and have a little party. And sometimes at some point the other girls start making noise because they hear them calling each other and, you know, so it's very, it's very situational, but it's very much knowing kind of their nightly routine at this point and how that's all gonna go. And it's when we hear something out of the normal of that that we pay more attention to and try to tell if we can see who it is and exactly what the trumpet sounds like. Does it sound like there's any fear in it or does it just sound like a happy trumpet or so on?
- [25:22]
A
No wonder they're so exhausted in the morning if they're. The whole, the whole evening, the whole night is communication. As we close the podcast, I just had to think again of the story that you told from Barbara, from Tess, from the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee when she came to the aid of Bunny once and then she came to the aid of Sissy. Huh? And you said, you obviously didn't call Barbara over, but she must have sensed something. So is that possibly. Or was that possibly woo woo and energy, her sensing Bunny's fear or Sissy's fear, or was that possibly the infrasonic communication? What do you think?
- [26:04]
C
All of the above, Nadia. All of the above. You know, again, we, we, we have no talking, no problem talking about woo woo. When we say, oh, dogs have a sixth sense. They all know. Well, sure, so do we and so do elephants, and so do all animals, and so do all creatures. You know, I think they do also. We have that capacity to, to sense that energy and our. What's going on, the vibe of a person that doesn't have to be language, you know, that we know that exists, you know, so is it the, the, was it our anxiety? That other elephant was the anxiety of the Elephant, you know, that was, you know, in distress at that point. You know, what was it that was that trigger for Barbara? We have no idea, you know, or did she make an actual low frequency call that we didn't perceive that was actually a definitive call for assistance? We don't know.
- [26:53]
B
And it's weird again, because people, people think it's weird when you talk about that with elephants, but it is something that's also common in people. You've never met somebody before that you're just like, oh, I don't know what it is about you. Bad vibe, don't want anything to do with you. You know, that sort of. It happens all the time in people, but then when you talk about it in elephants, all of a sudden it becomes this, oh, you guys are like so weird. Talking about. It's like, no, it's not. This is stuff that happens every day with every other species, including people. It's nothing. I mean, yes, they're better at everything than humans, but I mean, it's nothing like super outlandish that we're talking about.
- [27:39]
A
Ah, fascinating. Yes. Time is against us and I need to go out with a flashlight to look.
- [27:45]
C
Thank you.
- [27:48]
A
That's obviously like the spanner in the woodworks and the, the wrench. So this difference between British and American English. So yes, everybody, I do do not torch my slugs. I pick them up with gloves and throw them across to the neighbor. No, I don't. I thr. Across the bottom of the garden. Okay then. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all your stories.
- [28:10]
B
Hopefully your neighbor doesn't listen. Yeah, he's gonna be like, now I know. I have so many slugs.
- [28:18]
A
No, no, I don't do that. Okay then, have a lovely rest of your day and we'll catch up for our next recording. Okay, bye.
- [28:26]
C
Bye.
- [28:26]
B
Bye.
- [28:27]
A
That's all that we have time for this week. We hope you enjoyed the podcast and if you did, don't forget to subscribe. Hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. Another great zero cost way to support the podcast is by leaving a five star rating or a glowing review, as this helps other people discover the podcast. Thank you so much for your support and until we meet up for our next episode, take care.