Who pioneered the field of elephant vocal communication research?
Over the past two decades dozens of hardworking scientists have dedicated their time and resources to studying different aspects of elephant communication. Katy Payne, Bill Langbauer and their colleagues focused on infrasonic calls made by elephants, Joyce Poole has been attempting to decipher the meaning of specific calls, and David Larom and Michael Garstang have studied the various effects of atmospheric conditions on the size of calling ranges. Scientists such as Lynette Hart and her former student, Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, are currently studying the possibility of seismic communication between elephants. More recently, Katy Payne and her colleagues have been looking at ways of using the calls of elephants to estimate the number of elephants in forests.
