How Low Can You Go? Physical Production Mechanism of Elephant Infrasonic Vocalizations

Abstract

The Song of the Elephant In mammals, vocal sound production generally occurs in one of two ways, either through muscular control—as when a cat purrs or, more commonly, by air passing through the vocal folds—which occurs in humans and facilitates production of extremely high frequency bat calls. Over the past 20 years, it has been recognized that elephants can communicate through extremely low frequency infrasonic sounds. Taking advantage of a natural death of an elephant in a zoo, Herbst et al. (p. 595 ) examined the biomechanics of elephant sound production in an excised elephant larynx. Self-sustained vocal-fold vibrations, without the presence of any neural control, were used to produce infrasonic elephant sounds, using the same mechanism as singing in humans and echolocation in bats.