Dr. Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, PhD at Stanford University was studying a herd of elephants one day in 1994 when she noticed a peculiar behavior among the members of the herd. Every once in a while, the herd would stop, draw their ears in close to their bodies and sometimes stand on three feet.
In the wild, elephants depend on their keen sense of hearing to protect themselves from predators, which got Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell thinking. These animals wouldn't retract their ears if they sensed danger. They'd be on high alert as nature had taught them. Instead, ears were held close to the body, as though the elephants were trying to block out external sound. Very curious.
Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell and her team began to examine the phenomenon more closely and quickly discovered that elephants not only hear with their ears, they also have sensitive hearing mechanisms in the soft, fatty pads behind their toes and at the tip of their trunks.
In her book, The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa (Free Press, division of Simon and Schuster), O'Connell-Rodwell writes about her field studies in seismic hearing among elephants.
In August, 2007, O'Connell-Rodwell published a detailed article in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. In it, she stated "I see this is going to be a lifetime journey." As a research associate in Stanford's otolaryngology department, Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell hopes to establish analogies between human and elephant hearing conducted at the university because the hearing-impaired population is "much better at feeling vibrations," she said.
Her field research holds great promise for increased understanding of seismic hearing and alternative means of hearing in humans.
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