Obviously animals do not have the same type of language as humans, but they can communicate with each other, which means that they are able to tell things to each other in various ways. The sociable, intelligent and sensitive elephants are definitely able to communicate, by touch, smell, or movements, but mostly of course by sounds. One might automatically think of their trumpeting, but most sounds produced by elephants originate from their throats and are so low that our ears cannot hear them. But how do we know they exist, you might say? We can register them and then make them audible for us. Because they are so low, the sounds can be heard by other elephants who are up to 5 kilometres away. Elephants can let each other know from a distance about possible danger and about where water or good food can be found. By communicating in this way it is also possible for a female to find a bull, or for two bulls in musth to keep out of each otherís way. They can also call for help or simply keep in contact.

Elephants in a herd constantly chat. An American researcher, Katy Payne, has been studying elephant language for a long time and is currently finding out what exactly they are telling each other. She has already discovered the sound a baby elephant makes to tell its mother that it does not want milk, what elephants say when they are surprised, when they want to calm an elephant down, the sound a matriarch makes when she wants them to come together, or when she wants the bulls to be very careful when they visit the herd in order not to harm the young ones, etc. Perhaps the things they say to each other are are very similar to our own messages. Katy Payne hopes to decipher the entire elephant language and then humans might be able to communicate with them.

Researchers have discovered that elephants are very sensitive to vibrations of the ground surface. The drone of an elephant stamping its feet or of a herd running away, can be felt by others more that ten miles away. In this way elephants are probably able to pass messages to each other, while being so far apart. Perhaps they can be warned when they feel that a nearby herd runs away in a panic.

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