Can we track elephants using earthquake detectors?

When individuals in a group of elephants are separated, even for the briefest of moments, they are somewhat excited when reunited. “They are like dogs that returned to their owners after they separated for 15 minutes. They are really happy, they are really excited,” says Oliver Lamb, a geophysicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Really happy to see each other again. ”

It might seem a little strange for a geophysicist to describe the behavior of an elephant, but Lamb is not just a fan. He is using the tools of his trade – that is, seismographs – to see if he can hear these signs of joy.

Seismographs are primarily designed to detect seismic waves emitted by earthquakes: earthquakes, lunar earthquakes and earthquakes. But these little boxes of mechanical magic are so sensitive these days that they can detect the grumbling that all kinds of things make, from the sounds of tornadoes and melting ice to the startling rhythm of humanity.

Researchers tested whether low-cost seismometers could be beneficial in elephant conservation. Courtesy of Oliver Lamb

In recent years, scientists have used them to listen to elephants, whether it’s the sounds they make with their feet or the 110-decibel yawning. “The sounds are very loud,” says Lamb. “I don’t know if you’re close to elephants, but they shake your entire body, it sounds very intense.” These sounds also shake the ground, making their own seismic noise.

There are some reasons why scientists want to do this, but the most important one is conservation: Seismographs may be an effective way to track elephants remotely and without disturbing them.

It’s a promising idea, but Kate Evans, founder and director of the nonprofit Elephants for Africa, says affordability is key. High-tech seismometers can run into well over $ 10,000 a pop, which is something elephant-monitoring efforts cannot always afford. “A lot of this technology is not applicable in the context of conservation,” she says.

Elephants on a sanctuary in Bella Bella, South Africa, helped test the idea. Courtesy of Oliver Lamb

So Lamb and colleagues wanted to see if a low-cost seismometer ($ 1,000 or less) could have some use. He chose the Raspberry Shake and Boom devices, which can capture sound waves traveling through the atmosphere and seismic waves traveling across the Earth. They’ve already been proven to pick up earthquakes, avalanches, rocket launches and exploding meteors into the air, so it seemed worth a shot.

The team headed to Adventures With Elephants, a 750-acre Savannah Reserve in Bella Bella, South Africa. “These elephants in particular were rescued from situations where they could have been shot or killed,” Lamb explains. There, the team created a series of shakes and poms at varying distances from a group of seven African elephants, including adults and calves.

These seismographs are designed to be deployed in the home. Simply plug it into the wall and connect to the internet, in which case, you have your very own personal earthquake tracker. This setup is impossible in the wild, so the team modified them with solar powered car batteries and storage devices that they could pick up when the experiment was over.

Movements of elephants in the Kruger National Park and elsewhere can create seismic signals. Lloyd Horgan / Alamy

As a first test, the aim was simply to see if the elephant’s sounds and movement could be detected. The work focused on reuniting the aforementioned elephants and their cheerful screams. For the sake of comparison, more technically efficient devices have also been built around the reserve.

As reported last month in Frontiers in Conservation Science, they were not quite as successful as the team had hoped. The quality of the audio signals decreased sharply with distance. The farthest distance that a low-cost sensor could detect an elephant roar was about 650 feet. Elephant foot drum percussion can be recorded within 165 feet.

Neither result is ideal for tracking, but adjustments can be made. Seismographs were simply placed in the soil, where their loose grains could dampen incoming seismic signals. Ideally, Lamb explains, concrete tanks might help, a standard practice for seismometers: The vaults vibrate in response to seismic waves, making them more sensitive to signals.

Female elephants and their calves at a watering hole in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa. Franz Limens / Alami

Improvements are needed, but experts agree that low-cost seismometers can play a conservation role. African elephants are listed as “endangered” in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, and are “Endangered” in some areas. According to Vicky Bolt, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Reading, who is not involved in the work, and who has studied African elephants for nearly a decade, both climate change and human-wildlife conflict are pressing concerns. “It’s a growing problem in Africa, because we’re seeing populations expand in the landscape,” she says, which could lead to potentially deadly clashes on both sides.

Lamb’s low-cost seismographs can provide rural communities with a cost-effective alert system when elephants are heading toward their homes or farms. The inexpensive and easy-to-set up devices can be placed around known elephant collection sites nearby, such as irrigation pits, and set to “send an early warning SMS message to farmers in the area,” says Evans, who was also not involved in the project. This will provide an opportunity to avoid the elephants or deploy a nonviolent deterrent. Evans suggests “burning chili peppers with dried dung” – an all-natural tear gas that elephants seek to avoid.

When the pandemic is over and travel restrictions lifted, Lamb hopes to conduct more tests with low-cost seismometers to see if they are useful in tracking elephants as they move across landscapes, and even deciphering their long-range communications.

Elephants welcome each other like long lost friends, even after a short separation. ibke Woyke / Scientific

Elephants are often marked with GPS collars, “but they can be very stressful for elephants. You have to climb up to them, calm them down, and separate them from the herd,” Lamb says. Hoops can also sometimes irritate an elephant’s skin if not fitting properly. Seismographs can, in some places, eliminate the need for them.

Previous works have revealed that elephant voices are remarkably complex symphonies full of information that help elephants coordinate their movements, inform others of their moods and reproductive states, and distinguish friends from strangers. And they don’t just use their ears. Their feet catch the seismic waves created by other flocks. Lamb and his colleagues hope they can use seismographs to detect this advanced form of long-range communication. Machine learning algorithms can even be deployed to distinguish between different elephant murmurs. Seismographs can, in theory, independently identify individuals within flocks.

It’s still too early, but this technology could take place alongside GPS, drones, satellites and personnel as “another tool to add to the toolkit” of conservationists, says Bolt. And they have already given scientists who haven’t usually seen the study of living things a new appreciation for wildlife biology.

“They are very nice animals,” says Lamb. “They have an attendance that I never realized before, someone you don’t get from places like zoos.” “They are amazing animals.”

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