The vibration sense in large mammals and its role in communication: Elephants as a case study

All mammals have the ability to detect vibrations and there are some notable cases of small mammals dedicating much of their sensory world to vibration detection such as the star nosed mole, the golden mole, the blind mole rat. In large mammals, the concept of using vibrations as a form of prey detection, predator avoidance, or communication has not been explored to a great extent. A few cases of these three uses of vibrations will be reviewed as they pertain to and may benefit the lion, kangaroo, and elephant seal, respectively. Elephants are well suited to communicate seismically, given their high amplitude, low frequency vocalizations that couple with and propagate in the ground as seismic signals. A unique combination of anatomical structures found on the elephant would also facilitate seismic detection through either a bone conducted or somatosensory pathway, or both. A series of studies will be reviewed demonstrating the elephants ability to generate and propagate seismic energy from vocalizations and footfalls as well as their ability to detect and discriminate not only biologically meaningful seismic cues from noise, but also subtle differences between seismic vocalizations given in the same context.