Indian Wildlife Club Forum

Jason Antony and Ankur Chaturvedi:

I found this extremely interesting article on the website of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun. Here is an excerpt

---"For example, elephants use their powerful infrasonic calls in long distance communication, which can be monitored from a long distance using infrasonic recorder. Earlier studies reveal that the elephants strongly respond to their conspecific calls playback even up to 7 km. distance. Till now, surveys of forest elephants have been based on systematic counts of dung. Cornell Laboratory of Bioacoustics, USA, is developing a new technique known as ‘acoustical monitoring system for elephants’ census.Long distance acoustical monitoring of the elephants not only useful in population estimation but also be used to alert the peoples living on the edges of forests, regarding the movements of elephants."

The full article by Ani Kumar, discussing sounds made by birds and other mammals is available at the link below

http://www.wii.gov.in/publications/newsletter/annual2002/article11.htm