Creating an Elephant Dictionary

Did you know that scientists at Cornell University are trying to develop a dictionary so we can understand what elephants are saying when they communicate with each other? This topic seemed to spark interest with students at The Learning Center so we partnered via video-conference with high school students from New York to learn how they were assisting the Elephant Listening Project to work on this task.

Video footage of an elephant's natural habitat was shown to us and then the New York students showcased recording equipment that is used in the field to collect the sound recordings. After we understood the environment and procedures for sound recordings, the students from New York explained to us how they obtained actual elephant sounds and then translated those recordings into graphs. It is by analyzing these graphs that scientists are able to construct a dictionary of their sounds.

This was a very fascinating video conference in which students learned about ultrasonic sounds, elephant habitats and elephant forest conservation. It left us pondering...could we create an animal dictionary based upon sounds? If so, then what animal would be like to be able to communicate with on a regular basis?