Giraffes have a socially structured system, and for a long time scientists have been trying to figure out how they communicate, said Meredith Bashaw at the Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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Oddly enough, the zoo managers were surprised when the researchers played them the recordings of the giraffes, as they had never heard the sounds coming from the giraffe enclosures during the day, according to Mashable.
For centuries researchers have tried to work out how giraffes communicate. More than 947 hours of sounds made by the long-necked animals were recorded throughout a period of 8 years, in 3 European zoos from Berlin, Copenhagen and Vienna. Although they were known to have a well-developed larynx, it was thought they could only produce occasional grunts, bursts or snorts. Has anyone heard the sound a giraffe makes? But scientists are still not sure what these sounds are used for. Such a long neck makes it hard to generate sufficient airflow which is needed to produce vocalizations. In a few instances, some researchers have recorded mother giraffes and their newborns vocalizing to each another, and what researchers could hear were instinctual bleats of alarm. This range is quite low, barely able for humans to hear, which may account for why zookeepers were previously unaware of the sounds.
Scientists have discovered that giraffes can communicate with each other by humming at incredibly low frequencies.
“These results show that giraffes do produce vocalizations, which based on their acoustic structure, might have the potential of function as communicative signals to convey information about the physical and motivational attributes of the caller”. There were no video recordings throughout the night, to determine a definite link between the sounds and certain actions or responses.
The researchers weren’t able to observe giraffes during their humming, so we don’t have much to go on just yet. Such species normally associate in herds, which reflect their affiliation and attachment to one another.
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The assumptions were made due to the fact that the animals only hummed at night, which might also be for the goal of announcing others of their locations when their vision is very limited in the dark. Now, experts are investigating these “humming” vocalizations to see to what they might transmit and what relevance they may have to the animals’ behavior.
