Asian elephants have a nasal pronunciation



Researchers from the University of Vienna studied the cries of Asian elephants using an acoustic camera that shows sound pressure. Elephants rarely used their mouths alone to create their low frequency "rumbles," preferring instead to use their trunk or their mouth and trunk together. This is the first study to unequivocally show that a non-human animal can emit calls using both its mouth and its nose. The study was just released in the publication "Animals."

The world's longest nasal elongation is found in elephants. Unsurprisingly, when they release their low-frequency, partially infrasonic rumbles via the lengthy trunk, they resound even deeper. Veronika Beeck and Angela Stoeger's team of cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna have recently demonstrated that these vocal tract resonances, commonly known as a nasal pronunciation in human language, are essential for animal communication. The researchers hypothesize that Asian elephants may be able to encode more information due to their higher vocal flexibility. Additionally, the calls' ability to travel great distances may be improved by the lower frequency resonances.

Humans shape their vowels by moving their tongues, lips, and mouth aperture, which alters the resonances of their vocal tract. Humans "nasalize" the sound of vowels by opening the velum and allowing air to pass through the oral and nasal cavities at the same time. The nasalization of vowels alters the meaning of a word in several languages, such as French or Hindi, where the French word beau (pronounced "beautiful") means "beautiful" and the Hindi word bon (pronounced "good") means "good."

Mammals' vocal tracts, which consist of the oral and nasal passageways above the larynx, and consequently the timbre of their cries, were formerly thought to be far less adaptable in mammals. Animal cries frequently only change between species based on whether they are made with the mouth or the nose. The engineers Gunnar Heilmann and Michael Kerscher joined the Viennese researchers in this project. Together, they observed Asian elephants in Nepal using an audio camera to determine how they produce their cries. Similar to a thermal camera, an acoustic camera uses color coding to show sound pressure.

Most calls were made through the trunk. "We were surprised to see calls being made simultaneously through the lips and nose on the acoustic camera. These calls' resonance spectra were very comparable to those of human nasal vowels, "Veronika Beeck reveals. This is the first study to convincingly demonstrate orally and nasally coupled cries, despite the fact that it has previously been suggested in fallow deer, elephant seals, and Diana monkeys.

The researchers propose that mammal sounds may be more adaptable than previously believed in light of this fresh data. Acoustic communication is essential in social systems like the intricate matriarchy of elephants, but it is still unclear what the blended mouth-and-trunk cries actually do.

University of Vienna

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