Brains Matter

In this episode, which is the final of a 2 part interview, I talk once again with Professor Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne on further topics regarding Asian elephants, and on saving them.

- elephant accents
- what happens when you play Asian elephant vocalisations to captive African elephants? Some surprising results!
- Potelemic time African elephants versus Asian elephants in Gaza (circa 100 BC)
- Infrasound communication, and how this may relate to their aquatic ancestry
- The distance of infrasound communication
- Gestation of elephants
- Elephant mating
- How do elephants produce infrasound?
- Do elephants and whales understand each other?
- The relationship between whale and elephant communications
- Elephant mahoots and what they were able to train elephants to do
- How many words can elephants understand?
- The intelligence of elephants in comparison to primates
- Prof Short’s circus experiences
- The knowledge of mahoots
- How can we communicate with elephants, and help save them?

Also featured on today’s episode is a discussion on elephants from Dr Roger Rassool from the University of Melbourne, from an Australian & New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science presentation which I attended.
- Dr Roger Rassool showing elephant behaviour with different elephant sounds from an ANZAAS presentation
- How do we know elephants are communicating?
- The experiment on getting the Melbourne elephants talking to the Perth elephants
- How was the recording done?
- The actual elephant sounds!

Download MP3 of Ep 78

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