How listening to elephants can help conserve rainforests

The Elephant Listening Project is a bioacoustics research effort that aims to preserve rainforests of Central Africa--and the biodiversity found in those forests--by listening to forest elephants, and on this episode we hear those animals' calls, rumbles, and trumpets with ELP researcher Ana Verahrami.

Verahrami has spent two field seasons in the Central African Republic collecting behavioral and acoustic data vital to the project & joins us to explain why forest elephants' role as keystone species makes their survival crucial to the wellbeing of tropical forests and its other inhabitants, and to play some of the fascinating recordings that inform the project's work.

Helping frame the discussion is Terna Gyuse, Mongabay's Cape Town-based Africa Editor.

ELP is part of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, whose bioacoustics research team we've featured several times in the past, listen to these episodes for more fascinating bioacoustics studies that feature the calls, songs, and sounds of diverse animals what they may mean for them and for conservation:

• How listening to individual gibbons can benefit conservation

• What underwater sounds can tell us about Indian Ocean humpback dolphins

• The superb mimicry skills of an Australian songbird

• The sounds of tropical katydids and how they can benefit conservation

Photo of forest elephants at Dzanga bai in Central African Republic © Ana Verahrami, ELP.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, visit the link above for details.

And please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on Android, the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify, or wherever they get podcasts.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.