Scheifele took an exploratory trip to Bela-Bela in the fall of 2018, setting the stage for the 2019 trip. Scheifele and his team have performed hearing testing on elephants in the Indianapolis Zoo, building off his work that originated with puppies at his UC FETCHLAB and other exotic animals under professional care at zoos and aquaria. While working with the elephants at the Indianapolis Zoo, he has seen instances where the matriarch of the herd will make a sound that humans can’t hear but can feel in their chest that produces a reaction in the other elephants. Scheifele says in addition to picking up vibrations in their feet, they also pick up some through their trunk and process these vibrations in the auditory portion of their brain. “Some research has been done on elephant communication and we know that elephants make certain kinds of sounds and some of these sounds are seismic, allowing them to communicate with each other through the ground at very far distances.” “Nobody knows the exact frequency range elephants can hear and what is needed to be able to make the elephant hear it, and detect that sound,” says Scheifele. This is the second trip that Pete Scheifele, PhD, professor, and executive director of FETCHLAB at UC, has made to Bela-Bela as part of a project that is the first to ever test the hearing of African elephants. Undergraduates in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) in the College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS) spent their spring break testing the hearing of elephants in Bela-Bela, South Africa. What can elephants hear and do they communicate at frequencies humans can’t? That is what seven students from the University of Cincinnati went to South Africa to find out. Education in Action right arrow down arrow.
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