elephant sounds

  • ElephantVoices education

    "In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand.
    We will understand only what we are taught."
    Baba Dioum, Senegalese environmentalist, addressing the General Assembly of IUCN, 1968.

    We approach our elephant work in the same spirit as Baba Dioum. Our endeavor to protect elephants is inspired by love and deep respect for them as a species and as individuals, which, in turn, is based on our understanding of them gained through long-term study.

    To protect the lives of elephants and to sustain the beauty of the places they live, we must inspire others to feel likewise. Therefore, education, the sharing of knowledge, underpins all that we do.

    We give lectures, speak to school kids, exchange emails with students, disseminate information through our website, news blog, databases and via documentaries and publications and by being available for the media.

    Our online collections of elephant sounds, gestures, and behaviors, form a unique resource that we hope will be of value to everyone visiting ElephantVoices. The same goes for the other databases and information made available.

    You'll find us on different Social Media through the links on the top right.

    The short film below

  • Introduction

    The Elephant Ethogram is a uniquely detailed catalogue, or library, of the behavior and communication of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). It is based on decades of ElephantVoices behavioral studies, photographs, and audio and video recordings, the referenced research of other elephant biologists, as well as professional and amateur footage made available to ElephantVoices. You can read more about how elephants communicate within this section of elephantvoices.org. The Elephant Ethogram was launched in May 2021.

    Joyce and Petter documenting elephant behavior in Amboseli, Kenya. (©ElephantVoices)The Elephant Ethogram consists of written and referenced descriptions, video examples, photographic illustrations and, where relevant, audio recordings, of 322 Behaviors, 103 Behavioral Constellations and 23 Behavioral Contexts. There are close to 3,000 media files in the fully searchable Elephant Ethogram including 2,408 video clips (18 August 2021).

    The concept and structural design of The Elephant Ethogram was developed by Joyce Poole and Petter Granli of ElephantVoices. Programming and database maintenance is handled by Derrick Joel, Nairobi, Kenya in collaboration with Petter. The Elephant Ethogram is coded in open source software PhP and MySQL in Joomla! CMS, and is hosted on Cisco servers as a section of elephantvoices.org. Video and audio is hosted on Vimeo and SoundCloud, respectively.

    What is an Ethogram?

    An ethogram is a comprehensive list, inventory, catalogue or description