What are elephants really ‘saying?’ First-ever library reveals communication mysteries.
In 1975, 19-year-old Joyce Poole was offered the chance of a lifetime: To study elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park.
Elephant researcher Cynthia Moss, who had just started a study of female African elephants, asked the American college student if she would do the same for the males, whom Moss jokingly called “boring,” according to Poole.
Poole quickly proved the animals were anything but, discovering that male African elephants experience reproductive cycles, called musth—something elephant biologists had long argued against. This major finding launched her career, and in the 46 years since, Poole, a National Geographic Explorer, has become one of the world’s experts in how African elephants behave and communicate.
In 2002, Poole and her Norwegian husband, Petter Granli, founded the California-based nonprofit ElephantVoices, to educate the public on both how elephants communicate and the importance of conserving them.
Now, drawing on data and videos accumulated during decades of study in Amboseli, Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, and Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, Poole and Granli have created the African Elephant Ethogram—the most comprehensive audiovisual library ever made of African savanna elephant behavior.
