Listening test

C. To examine how they were paralyzed 
D. To show the importance of happiness from recovery 
29. The author uses politicians to exemplify that they can 
A. Have emotions. 
B. Imitate actors. 
C. Detect other people’s lives. 
D. Mask their true feelings. 
 

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page 15 
Part 5 
Elephant Communication 
O’ Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia’s 
first-ever wildlife reserve to explore the mystical and complicated realm of elephant 
communication. She, along with her colleagues, is part of a scientific revolution that started 
almost 20 years ago. This revolution has made a stunning revelation: elephants are capable 
of communicating with each other over long distances with low-frequency sounds, also 
known as infrasounds, which are too deep for humans to hear. 
Other aspects of elephant anatomy also support that ability. First, their massive bodies, 
which enable them to give out low-frequency sounds almost as powerful as the sound a jet 
makes during takeoff, serve as ideal frames for receiving ground vibrations and transmitting 
them to the inner ear. Second, the elephant’s toe bones are set on a fatty pad, which might 
be of help when focusing vibrations from the ground into the bone. Finally, the elephant 
has an enormous brain that sits in the cranial cavity behind the eyes in line with the 
auditory canal. The front of the skull is riddled with sinus cavities, which might function as 
resonating chambers for ground vibrations. 
It remains unclear how the elephants detect such vibrations, but O’ Connell-Rodwell raises 
a point that the pachyderms are ‘listening’ with their trunks and feet instead of their ears. 
The elephant trunk may just be the most versatile appendage in nature. Its utilization 
encompasses drinking, bathing, smelling, feeding and scratching. Both trunk and feet 
contain two types of nerve endings that are sensitive to pressure – one detects infrasonic 
vibration, and another responds to vibrations higher in frequencies. As O’ Connell-Rodwell 
sees, this research has a boundless and unpredictable future. ‘Our work is really interfaced 
of geophysics, neurophysiology and ecology,’ she says. ‘We’re raising questions that have 
never even been considered before.’ 
It has been well-known to scientists that seismic communication is widely observed among 
small animals, such as spiders, scorpions, insects and quite a lot of vertebrate species like 
white-lipped frogs, blind mole rats, kangaroo rats and golden moles. Nevertheless, 
O’Connell-Rodwell first argued that a giant land animal is also sending and receiving seismic 
signals. ‘I used to lay a male planthopper on a stem and replay the calling sound of a 
female, and then the male one would exhibit the same kind of behaviour that happens in 
elephants—he would freeze, then press down on his legs, move forward a little, then stay 
still again. I find it so fascinating, and it got me thinking that perhaps auditory 
communication is not the only thing that is going on.’ 

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