Status
Call number
Collection
Publication
Description
Scientific discovery is not always the result of a careful accumulation of data or a measured consideration of the facts. Sometimes it takes a leap of imagination. The author, a naturalist and conservationist, took just such a leap and made an amazing discovery about how elephants communicate. And that was only the beginning of her adventure. In 1984, she visited the elephants at Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon. She had been studying whale songs for the last fifteen years, and she was curious about the ways that elephants, the largest living land mammals, communicated with each other. What was observed in the first week seemed, at the time, to be little cause for scientific excitement. But on her flight home, she flashed back to a childhood experience of singing in the church choir. Suddenly she realized that she had felt, in the presence of the elephants, a deep throbbing in the air just like the lowest notes of the church organ. She and two colleagues were soon able to show that elephants use powerful infrasound, sound pitched too low for the human ear to hear, in communication. This "silent thunder" allows elephants to interact over long distances. This was the basis of the discovery of infrasonic communication among elephants. The author and her colleagues went on to do important field research on elephant communication in Kenya, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. But in 1991 the peaceful rhythms of their work were violently interrupted by a cull, a planned killing, that destroyed five of the elephant families they were studying. This destruction convinced her that all life is sacred, and she determined to challenge the philosophies that support culling. This work is a natural history rich in ponderings about the animal world and how humans participate in it. It is also a passionate story of the author's own spiritual quest as she turns an observant eye on her own role in this world and honors the holistic perspective of her indigenous friends, who became her teachers in Zimbabwe.… (more)
User reviews
Payne is first and foremost a marine biologist, in the sense that she spent a significant amount of time researching and studying whale communications. She's an expert on echolocation, specifically the various frequencies whales use and the ins-and-outs of the correlation between communication & behavior. So, naturally it seems a bit odd that she would be writing a book about... elephants?!
Apparently one day, Payne visited a zoo and became curious about the way elephants communicate. After some observation, she formed some theories about elephant communication - centered around, you guessed it, echolocation and frequencies beyond human hearing - and decided to conduct some tests. The rest, as they say, is history.
Payne was only the second person to suggest elephants could communicate over vast distances, and it was her work that truly paved the way to a better understanding of these magnificent creatures. The first half of this book is packed with incredible anecdotes about elephant behavior (most of which I repeated to anyone who would listen, I was so amazed) and information about elephant society & structures. I raced through the first half of the book, mesmerized...
But when the second half hit, I slowed down. While still very important to read, the material becomes very heavy in the sense that difficult issues are addressed like poaching, culling, and the inevitable difficulties with working in an African country where the local governments aren't always as cooperative as researchers would like (not to mention the corruption in some places). Payne details several meetings with governments and conservation groups where drastic decisions are made that affect the elephant populations, and not necessarily for the better. After reading some of these sections, I had to put the book down and walk away for a bit, just to let it sit before continuing. Still, it was important to read, and I'm glad I did.
I'd also have to say that the second half of the book dealt not only with the elephant studies, but also with the relationships between the people of the area, the researchers, and the animals (elephants, lions, et al). There are brief forays into 'spiritual' observations about the people (and their traditions) and several dreams that Payne has which relate to the animals, which seem slightly out of place, but I didn't think they distracted too much from the core of the book. If anything, I thought it slightly intriguing that a scientist would include her spiritual experiences in a book like this, as strange as it was.
On the whole, I'm very glad I read this book. I learned so much more about elephants than I previously knew, and I have a greater understanding of what people go through when they dedicate their lives to observing and studying a species in the wild. My favorite part of the book was definitely the inclusion of behavioral anecdotes, which were fascinating - I'm inspired to read more about African wildlife, and would be interested in reading more about elephants specifically in the future.