Another week, another noise! Tava is making a sound called a rumble.

Another week, another noise! Tava is making a sound called a rumble. There are two types of rumbles, a nasal rumble and an oral rumble. Tava is making a nasal rumble that originates in the nasal cavity, which you can see vibrating in the video. Rumbles are one of the lowest frequency sounds an elephants can make. When they rumble, the sound waves travel through the air and through the ground and elephants can determine how far away the sound is by using both cues together. Have you ever been told to count the number of seconds between thunder and lightning to determine how far away lightning is? Similarly, the sound waves that elephants make can be picked up from the air, and they can be picked up from the ground by traveling through the bones of their feet, through their skeleton, and up to the bones in their ears through bone conduction. By using the information from both the air and the ground, they can triangulate the source of the sound.