Member-only story

Two New Discoveries in Animal Sciences

The more we learn, the blurrier the line between us and the rest of the animal kingdom becomes

Katrina Paulson
5 min readDec 19, 2023
two dolphins poking out of the water
Photo by Ranae Smith on Unsplash

I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems animal scientists are on a roll. It feels like we’re learning more about animals now than ever before, and everything we discover is forcing us to redefine what it means to be Human.

Seeing reports of new similarities between us and other animals is practically a weekly occurrence these days. So today, I’m going to tell you about two of them, both of which remind us, yet again, that we aren’t as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we assume.

Elephants Have Names

Like us, elephants are highly social and intelligent creatures with several communication methods, one of which is “seismic communication,” but it’s better well known as “rumbling” or “rumbles” because that’s what it sounds like to us.

An elephant’s rumble is transmitted through the air as sound but also through the ground as seismic vibrations. The furthest an elephant rumble has been measured traveling through air was about 1,013 feet (309 meters) per second and between about 813 and 866 feet (248 and 264 meters) per second through the ground. This allows elephant herds to spread out as they…

--

--

Katrina Paulson
Katrina Paulson

Written by Katrina Paulson

I write about recent discoveries that have the power to shift our perspectives. Check it out! --> https://curiousadventure.substack.com

Responses (11)