After listening to the 2012 song, “What Does The Fox Say,” a million times over, you may never want to question what an animal is actually saying. Scientists, however, are still curious about the giraffe.
Silent giraffes
Giraffes were originally believed to be incapable of making sounds. Although they do have voice boxes, their extremely long necks make it hard for them to move the air quickly enough through their vocal cords to create sound.
They have been heard snorting and growling, and even on occasion, they will produce a bleat. However, none of these sounds are consistent and they are not used to interact with other members of the species.
A new study, published in the journal BioMed Central, reveals how these animals may be able to communicate with one another. Researchers, after analyzing hundreds of hours worth of giraffe recordings, taken at three different zoos, were able to conclude that the animals produce a unique and low humming sound (infrasonic vocalizations) at about 92 Hz.
Humming to themselves, or to one another?
Due to its extremely low audibility, this particular hum cannot always be heard by the human ear. Furthermore, it was only seen to have occurred at night. Researchers, as such, are not positive about the nature of the sound, and whether or not it is even used for communication.
One explanation is that the hum may actually be a passive type of sound that is made when the animals are sleeping – something akin to the human snore. Another claim is that the sound is made when it is too dark to see during the night. In this scenario, the hum is used to guide other giraffes back to the direction of the herd.
Unfortunately, the researchers have yet to witness the animals making the sound, so needless to say, a lot more research needs to be conducted in order to determine the associations between the sound and the fact that it seems to only occur during the night, when visibility is low.
