Elephants
This reading profile brings together 8 source-linked articles that reference elephants.
Explore Fauna’s source-checked field guides and research articles covering elephants, or search the species catalog below for individual species profiles.Source-linked reading
- Field guideDo elephants have names?Machine learning applied to hundreds of elephant rumbles recorded in Kenya could predict which elephant a call was meant for, and elephants perked up when they heard calls originally addressed to them. Because the callers do not seem to imitate the receiver's voice, the labels look more like human names than like dolphin whistles.
- Field guideHow elephants communicate with infrasoundLarge vocal folds generate a low fundamental frequency plus higher harmonics. Low-frequency energy attenuates relatively slowly, so another elephant may detect a rumble beyond visual range; identity, context, habitat, wind, vegetation, and noise determine what information remains available.
- Field guideThe IUCN Red List: categories explainedThe IUCN Red List is the global standard for extinction risk. It sorts each assessed species into one of nine categories — every one a dated, evidence-based verdict in a stated geographic scope.
- Field guideWhy animals live in groupsAnimals remain social when context-dependent benefits exceed costs for participating individuals; the balance shifts with food distribution, predators, pathogens, kinship, dominance, season, and group size.
- Field guideDomestication vs. tamingHabituation, learning, handling, and conditioning can reduce one individual's fear of people without changing its ancestry. Domestication reshapes populations through selection, drift, management, and adaptation to human-created niches. Domestic individuals can be wary or aggressive, and tame individuals can remain members of wild lineages.
- Field guideGenetic drift and founder effectsBecause only some individuals leave descendants, allele frequencies fluctuate by chance from generation to generation. The fluctuations are stronger when effective population size is small. A few founders can carry unusual frequencies and reduced diversity into a new population, but later growth, migration, mutation, and selection shape what follows.
- Field guideHow animals see in low lightScarce photons are the central problem: anatomy can admit more light, rods and photopigments capture it, reflective layers offer a second pass, and neural circuits combine signals across space or time while accepting blur and noise.
- Field guideHow marine mammals diveMarine mammals dive on one breath by carrying substantial oxygen in blood and muscle, adjusting heart rate and circulation, tolerating low oxygen, and managing gases as pressure rises. These responses are flexible and differ greatly between shallow and deep divers.