Bee Threat Elicits Alarm Call In African Elephants. (2010)

Unlike the smaller and more vulnerable mammals, African elephants have relatively few predators that threaten their?survival. The sound of disturbed African honeybees Apis meliffera scutellata causes African elephants Loxodonta africana to?retreat and produce warning vocalizations that lead other elephants to join the flight. In our first experiment, audio?playbacks of bee sounds induced elephants to retreat and elicited more head-shaking and dusting, reactive behaviors that?may prevent bee stings, compared to white noise control playbacks. Most importantly, elephants produced distinctive?‘‘rumble’’ vocalizations in response to bee sounds. These rumbles exhibited an upward shift in the second formant location,?which implies active vocal tract modulation, compared to rumbles made in response to white noise playbacks.