Introduction: A conversation we cannot always hear
Imagine standing in a forest and watching a group of elephants. One raises its head, another moves its ears, and a third gently reaches out with its trunk. Somewhere in the distance, an elephant produces a deep rumble that is almost impossible for a human to hear.
To us, the forest may seem quiet. To the elephants, it may be full of messages.
Elephants are highly social animals that rely on communication to maintain relationships, locate family members, respond to danger and reproduce. They use a remarkable combination of sounds, body language, touch and scent. Some of their calls contain frequencies below the range of human hearing, allowing information to travel over distances of several kilometres under suitable conditions.
Understanding how elephants communicate helps us appreciate just how complex their lives are. Their world is not simply one of sights and sounds. It is a world of subtle signals, familiar voices, chemical information and, potentially, vibrations travelling through the ground beneath their feet.
1. The sounds we cannot hear
One of the most fascinating discoveries in elephant research is their use of infrasound — sound at frequencies below the usual lower limit of human hearing, approximately 20 hertz.
Elephants produce a variety of vocalisations, including trumpets, snorts, roars, squeaks and deep, low-frequency rumbles. Some of these rumbles contain infrasonic frequencies that most people cannot hear without specialised recording equipment.
These low sounds are particularly useful because lower-frequency sound can travel farther than higher-frequency sound in many environments. This gives elephants a way to communicate when vegetation, terrain or distance makes visual contact impossible.
Research by the Cornell University Elephant Listening Project has helped scientists understand how low-frequency calls travel through different habitats. In open savannah, elephant calls may be detected over several kilometres. In dense rainforest, background noise and vegetation can reduce the effective distance considerably.
So, how far can an elephant’s call travel?
Under favourable conditions, research suggests that elephant calls may be detectable over distances of several kilometres, and some estimates extend beyond 10 kilometres. However, this is not a fixed range. Wind, temperature, terrain, background noise and the strength of the call all affect how far it travels. Detecting a sound is also not the same as understanding its meaning.
The important point is that elephants have evolved a way of exchanging information over distances that would make ordinary conversation impossible for humans.
2. What are elephants saying to one another?
Scientists are still working to understand the full complexity of elephant communication. We know that their calls are associated with a range of social situations, including greetings, distress, group coordination, warnings and reproduction.
A low rumble may help elephants maintain contact with other members of their social group. When family members are spread out while feeding, calls can help them stay connected without needing to remain within sight of one another.
Vocalisations also play a role in reproduction. Females and males can use calls to communicate information related to reproductive condition, helping individuals locate potential mates.
Elephants may respond differently depending on the call they hear and the individual producing it. Research on African savannah elephants has shown that females can recognise calls associated with familiar family members and social groups.
This is important because elephant societies are built on relationships. Recognising a familiar individual is not merely a way of identifying another elephant; it can help maintain the social connections on which group life depends.
Researchers have begun building catalogues that connect particular calls with observed behaviour. Some vocalisations have recognisable contexts, while the meaning of many others remains uncertain.
Elephant communication is therefore a field of active research. Scientists are learning to interpret parts of their vocal repertoire, but we should be careful not to assume that every sound has a simple, direct translation into human language.
3. Listening through the ground
Perhaps even more surprising is the possibility that elephants can detect vibrations travelling through the ground.
When an elephant produces a powerful low-frequency rumble, the sound travels through the air. Some of its energy can also create vibrations that move through the ground. Walking, running and stamping can generate ground vibrations too.
Scientists call these ground-borne signals seismic signals. In this context, the word seismic refers to vibrations travelling through the Earth, not necessarily earthquakes.
Research has investigated whether elephants can detect these vibrations through sensitive structures in their feet and through bone conduction. Studies of Asian elephant feet have identified specialised sensory receptors that may contribute to vibration detection.
Elephants have also been observed adopting particular postures, sometimes placing more weight on their front feet or holding their trunks close to the ground. These behaviours have led researchers to investigate whether elephants are using their bodies to detect information carried through the earth.
There is evidence that elephant-generated vibrations can travel considerable distances. Some scientific models have estimated potential detection ranges extending many kilometres, although the actual contribution of seismic signals to communication in the wild is still being studied.
We should therefore distinguish between what researchers have measured, what experiments suggest elephants may detect, and what remains uncertain about how elephants use these signals naturally.
Even with these unanswered questions, the possibility is remarkable. An elephant’s surroundings may carry information not only through the air but also through the ground beneath it.
4. Body language: communicating without a sound
Elephants do not need to make a noise every time they communicate. Their bodies provide another important set of signals.
The position of the head, the movement of the ears, the direction of the trunk and the way an elephant approaches or moves away can all provide information about its behaviour and state of mind.
For example, elephants may spread their ears during displays of excitement or threat, while trunk movements and physical posture can help communicate during social encounters. However, individual gestures should not be interpreted in isolation. The surrounding situation and the elephant’s overall behaviour matter.
A single movement does not always have one fixed meaning.
Two elephants that know one another may approach, touch trunks or stand close together. In a different situation, an elephant may turn away, increase the distance between itself and another animal, or use its body to discourage an approach.
These interactions are part of how elephants negotiate their social relationships. They can communicate reassurance, playfulness, competition and the need for space without relying solely on vocal sounds.
For people observing elephants, this is an important lesson: watching an elephant means paying attention to the whole animal, not simply looking for a dramatic or obvious gesture.
5. The importance of touch
The elephant’s trunk is one of its most versatile tools. It is used for feeding, drinking, exploring objects and smelling, but it also plays a central role in physical communication.
Elephants may touch one another with their trunks during greetings, social interactions and moments of reassurance. A trunk may explore another elephant’s face, mouth or body, while calves often maintain close physical contact with their mothers and other members of the family.
Touch can be particularly important in relationships between family members. Young elephants learn about their surroundings and social behaviour through repeated interactions with older animals. Close contact can also help maintain bonds within the group.
Not every touch is affectionate, however. Physical contact can also occur during competition, discipline, dominance or conflict. As with vocalisations and body language, context is essential to understanding what is happening.
The trunk allows elephants to interact with remarkable precision. Its sensitivity and flexibility make it useful for exploring both the physical world and the other elephants within it.
6. A world shaped by scent
Humans often depend heavily on sight and hearing. Elephants, by contrast, have an exceptionally well-developed sense of smell, and scent plays a major role in how they gather information.
Using their trunks, elephants can investigate the scents left by other animals, including information contained in urine, dung and secretions from scent-producing glands.
These chemical cues can provide information about the identity of another elephant, its sex and aspects of its reproductive condition. Scents may also indicate that another elephant has recently passed through an area.
Unlike a sound or a brief movement, a scent can remain after the animal that produced it has moved away. This gives elephants a way to gather information about their surroundings even when another individual is no longer present.
Scent can be especially useful when elephants encounter unfamiliar individuals or explore areas used by other groups.
The next time you see an elephant carefully smelling the air or investigating something with its trunk, it may be doing much more than simply satisfying its curiosity. It could be gathering information about the world around it.
7. Communication, family and survival
Elephant communication is closely connected to their social lives.
Asian elephants commonly live in social groups centred on related females and their young, although group size and social arrangements vary. Individuals may separate temporarily while feeding and later come together again.
Communication helps make this flexible social life possible. Calls can help family members maintain contact. Touch and body language support close relationships. Scent provides information about individuals and their surroundings.
Communication also matters when danger is present. Elephants may produce alarm calls, change their posture, move closer together or respond to the behaviour of other group members. The reactions of experienced adults can be especially important for younger elephants.
The system is not simply about one animal sending a message and another receiving it. Elephants observe and respond to one another, and their behaviour is influenced by their relationships and the situation around them.
This combination of vocal, visual, tactile and chemical signals helps elephants navigate a complex social world.
8. What this means for people observing elephants
Understanding elephant communication changes the way we should approach them.
An elephant that moves away, turns its body, changes its posture or declines to interact is giving us information about what it wants to do at that moment. We may not know the exact meaning of every movement, but we can still respect the animal’s response.
Responsible elephant observation should allow elephants the space to choose whether to approach, remain nearby or move away. Visitors should not be encouraged to force contact or treat an elephant’s behaviour as a performance.
At a responsible reserve, observing elephants can be an opportunity to notice their natural interactions: the way they use their trunks, respond to one another, investigate scents and communicate through movement and sound.
These moments may be subtle, and they do not always happen on a visitor’s schedule. But that is part of what makes observing animals in a respectful environment so valuable. We are watching living animals with their own relationships, preferences and ways of interacting with the world.
Conclusion: Listening beyond what we can hear
Elephants communicate through a sophisticated combination of low-frequency sounds, body language, touch and scent. Some of their calls can travel for kilometres, while research into ground-borne vibrations is revealing another possible dimension of their communication.
Although scientists have made considerable progress, many aspects of elephant communication remain unexplained. Researchers are still working to understand the information carried by different calls, the role of seismic signals and how elephants interpret the many cues they receive.
That uncertainty is part of the fascination. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that elephants experience their surroundings in ways that are very different from our own.
When we watch elephants, we are seeing only part of what is happening. A forest that seems quiet to us may be filled with signals. An elephant that appears simply to be standing still may be listening, smelling or responding to another animal beyond our view.
Beyond the Elephant is about looking past the obvious and learning to appreciate the animal itself. By understanding how elephants communicate, we take another step towards recognising the complexity of their lives — and why they deserve our respect, patience and protection.
References and further reading
- Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute — Asian Elephant. An accessible overview of elephant communication, scent, touch and social behaviour.
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant - Cornell University, K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics — Elephant Sound. Research and recordings exploring infrasound, long-distance calls and the developing understanding of elephant vocalisations.
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/ccb/elephant-listening-project/sound/ - O’Connell-Rodwell, C. E. (2007). “Keeping an ‘Ear’ to the Ground: Seismic Communication in Elephants.” Physiology, 22(4), 287–294. A scientific review of how elephants may produce and detect ground-borne vibrations.
https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.00008.2007 - O’Connell-Rodwell and colleagues (2001). “Seismic properties of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) vocalizations and locomotion.” Research examining sound and ground vibrations generated by Asian elephants.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11144599/ - Klemperer, S. L. (2004). “Seismic waves from elephant vocalizations: A possible communication mode?” Geophysical Research Letters. Research investigating the potential transmission of elephant vocalisations through the ground.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2004GL019671
Note: Potential communication distances vary with the environment and the method used to estimate them. Modelled signal ranges should not be interpreted as proof that elephants can recognise and understand calls over the same distance.
