Stuffed Elephant & Interesting Elephant Facts

Given elephants are social animals and live in family herds made up of several females and their young, the life of a stuffed elephant toy can be a very lonely one. Perhaps hidden out of sight amongst an array of other plush toys, a stuffed elephant will pine for some much needed attention. If that should happen to come in the way of being able to be around other stuffed elephants, then all the better.

Did you know that when elephants feel like the threat of bees around, they emit a specific alarm call and quickly retreat? Even when elephants hear the sounds of angry bees played to them from a recording device, they run from the sound of the buzzing (despite their thick skin, an elephant is still susceptible to being stung around the eyes or up the trunk) and make a ‘rumbling’ noise and shake their heads. All this according to a team of scientists from Oxford University, Save the Elephants, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom, who, while studying elephants in Kenya, came upon the remarkable discovery.

So as to pinpoint the exact sound that triggers the elephants flee and sound response, scientists isolated specific parts of the call sounds elephants make and then played each of the recordings back to the animals to gage the results. An original recording of the elephant bee call was used, as was an identical recording except with an altered frequency, and finally, another type of elephant call sound altogether.
The original ‘bee rumble’ call forced 6 out of 10 elephant families to run away from the loud speaker from which the sound was generated; only one elephant moved away when the altered frequency call was played and two moved away when they heard the different call. What was also noted was the animals moved further away when hearing the bee rumble call’ as compared to the other two types of calls.

In order to determine if other threats besides bees, generate a similar response in elephants, more studies need to be conducted. However, based on this particular discovery, scientists believe that the different calls the elephants use is based on an emotional response to something they feel threatened by and, as a result, they may be trying to coordinate the family’s movements. In addition, the elephants may also be trying to warn other elephants of the imminent danger and/or could be trying to teach younger and less experienced elephants to be careful. Also evident is that much like humans who produce language, elephants use different sounds/calls so as to convey different meanings.

A stuffed elephant will never have the worry of running from a threat like bees, but it will suffer if left alone too long. After all, given elephants live in families, they are quite used to constant interaction, even affection why would a stuffed elephant feel any different?