Why the roar of elephants ranged up to 10km?

For the first time after many years of research, experts have deciphered why elephants' roars can reverberate up to 10km (allowing members of the pack to 'talk' to each other at this distance. ) as well as their pronunciation mechanism.

Similar to the way people talk, the sound appears when the air is pushed through the vocal cords (the part that emits the voice of the voice box) and causes it to vibrate. However, the elephants 'language' emitted at frequencies below 20 hertz - much lower than humans thanks to the eight times longer string, so that human ears cannot hear, Christian Herbst - one The scientist from Vienna University, Austria, said.

Although it can be as far as 10km, human ears cannot hear the sound of elephants.

Until now, experts have not been able to correctly answer the question of how elephants can produce such 'ultrasound' . In fact, it is difficult to study this problem in general animals. For people, they can attach cameras to the larynx through the throat and ask participants to make different kinds of sounds while animals cannot cooperate like that, Herbst said.

There are two ways to create sound when vibrating the vocal cords. The first method is called AMC (Active Muscular Contraction) . With this method, the muscles in the throat will constrict, causing the bar to vibrate, like cats that often make moans when they enjoy. The second method is called MEAD (Myoelastic-Aerodynamic) . MEAD uses air taken from the lungs to vibrate serenity, like the way people talk and sing.

Herbst and his colleagues tested both methods when having the opportunity to analyze the larynx of a dead elephant at Berlin Zoo. They attached a tube to the larynx and blew into it a warm air like a breath. The results show that MEAD is the cause of vibration consistent with extremely low sound.

In the animal world, the sound frequency between species has a huge difference, although most are between 300 and 3400 hertz. If the vocal cords in the elephant produce a sound that is lower than 20 hertz, then the bats will exceed 110,000 hertz, and for those, that number is between 50 and 7,000 hertz.

Reference: Livescience