Species
African bush elephant
Long-distance infrasonic coordination makes elephants the clearest case for treating context and group movement as first-class signals rather than audio alone.
Wild species
- • Never approach wild elephants. Maintain a minimum of 100 metres and stay in a vehicle where one is available.
- • Ear-spreading, head-shaking and a sudden forward step are warnings. Increase distance immediately.
- • Never position yourself between an adult and a calf, or between a herd and water.
Acoustic profile
What a recording device must capture.
Fundamental frequency
5–500 Hz
Meaningful spectrum
5 Hz – 9.0 kHz
Recommended sample rate
48.0 kHz
Individual profiles
Supported
Capture note
The primary social channel is the infrasonic rumble at 5–35 Hz. Phone and camera microphones roll off steeply below ~60 Hz, so rumbles are usually inferred from harmonics and amplitude envelope rather than measured directly. Interpretations are confidence-penalised accordingly.
Signature signals
What an experienced observer looks for in this species.
Contact rumble
audioLow-frequency call used to maintain herd cohesion over distance.
Ear spreading
videoBroadside display that increases apparent size — a warning.
Coordinated directional movement
videoGroup members aligning heading after a rumble.
Behaviours
Categories the engine may report — and the ones it must never report for this species.
Supported
Excluded for this species
Excluded categories are removed before ranking, so they can never win on a superficial signal match.
Taxonomy
- kingdom
- Animalia
- phylum
- Chordata
- class
- Mammalia
- order
- Proboscidea
- family
- Elephantidae
- genus
- Loxodonta
- species
- Loxodonta africana
Body-language channels
Only these are weighed for this species.
Limitations
- • Rumble fundamentals are below the range of consumer recording hardware.
- • Individual identification requires ear-notch photography that this release does not perform.
Species adapter
Adapter
elephant-adapter@0.1.0
Provenance
Priors derived from long-term field bioacoustics literature on Loxodonta rumble structure and matriarchal group coordination.