Uploaded March 2014 | Updated September 2026, 22 hours ago
Elephants roaming the Amboseli will generally encounter people from either the Maasai or Kamba ethnic groups. The Kamba live a predominantly agricultural lifestyle and rarely clash with elephants. Maasai, on the other hand, raise livestock and often battle elephants for access to grazing land and water.
Knowing that bad blood exists between elephants and the Maasai, researchers recorded voices of Maasai and Kamba males saying “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming” in their own languages. They also recorded the voices of Maasai women and children saying the same thing. Then, they followed approximately 58 elephant families and played the voices to test elephants’ responses.
When researchers played a Maasai male voice, elephants immediately started sniffing the air for danger and retreated into a bunched, defensive formation. By contrast, the elephants were unfazed by the Kamba male voice. Further, elephants didn’t seem to mind the voices of Maasai women and children.
Read the full story at: discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/elephants-can-distinguish-between-human-voices
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Karen McComb, Graeme Shannon, Katito N. Sayialel, and Cynthia Moss. 2014. Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices. PNAS. 111 (14) 5433-5438. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321543111
Video courtesy of Graeme Shannon.
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Elephants roaming the Amboseli will generally encounter people from either the Maasai or Kamba ethnic groups. The Kamba live a predominantly agricultural lifestyle and rarely clash with elephants. Maasai, on the other hand, raise livestock and often battle elephants for access to grazing land and water.
Knowing that bad blood exists between elephants and the Maasai, researchers recorded voices of Maasai and Kamba males saying “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming” in their own languages. They also recorded the voices of Maasai women and children saying the same thing. Then, they followed approximately 58 elephant families and played the voices to test elephants’ responses.
When researchers played a Maasai male voice, elephants immediately started sniffing the air for danger and retreated into a bunched, defensive formation. By contrast, the elephants were unfazed by the Kamba male voice. Further, elephants didn’t seem to mind the voices of Maasai women and children.
Read the full story at: discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/elephants-can-distinguish-between-human-voices
—
Karen McComb, Graeme Shannon, Katito N. Sayialel, and Cynthia Moss. 2014. Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices. PNAS. 111 (14) 5433-5438. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321543111
Video courtesy of Graeme Shannon.
—
ABOUT DISCOVER:
Discover is your source for science that matters, makes sense and is a lot of fun, too.
Visit us at: discovermagazine.com
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Twitter: twitter.com/DiscoverMag
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SUPPORT US:
Subscribe to Discover: bit.ly/34seAFT
Sign up for our newsletter: discovermagazine.com/newsletter-signup
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