Page 22 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 1 2025

NATURE

listening intently, but for what? Being an entomologist,
she recalled seeing insects freeze in similar fashion after
picking up the vibrations of potential partners (through
their legs) and homing in on them to mate.
Below: Calves stay with their
It transpired that the elephant was, in fact, “listening” mother for their first 10 years.
to vibrations through the soles of its feet. An elephant’s
cushioned feet have cartilaginous nodes directly above the
soles capable of picking up waveforms passing through
rock and soil. The nodes are of similar fatty material
whales and dolphins have in front of their skulls which
picks up underwater seismic waves emitted by others.
Dolphins and elephants, how far apart can one get? It’s
another instance of convergent evolution.
Nearly all mammals, at birth, have a brain size roughly
90 percent of the weight of the adult brain. Their survival
is based largely on instinct not on learning (brain work).
In stark contrast, human babies are, uniquely, born with
a brain only a quarter of adult size (28%) and elephant
babies with not much more (35%).
Humans and elephants are helpless at birth and have to
learn from their mothers how to survive. Both of us remain
vulnerable throughout our long childhood and so our
brains constantly develop and expand as we mature. For
the first 10 or so years, elephant babies never move far
from their mothers or from the extended family comprising
aunts and grannies. All members of an elephant herd show
a responsibility for the young regardless of whose young
they are.

Elephant herds are always led by females, usually the
oldest. The families may, on occasion, coalesce into bond
groups but when they split up and reform back into family
groups, they continue to stay in touch. We use technology
- elephants use infrasound - sound waves too low in
20 DPL issue 1 2025