 Before the five-year acoustic survey of African elephants in forested
environments can begin, researchers must understand the relationship
between elephants' calls and their behavior. Survey leader Katy Payne, at
right, briefs her laboratory assistants, Laura Kramer, left, and Vanessa
Baxter, center, on their mission: Plot the location and movements of
African elephants, as seen on the television monitor, from recordings made
by arrays of microphones. Photo by Charles Harrington/Cornell University. |
 Meeting at Cornell in September, scientists and bioacoustics engineers
planned a five-year campaign to monitor the forest elephants of Africa.
From left are Christopher Clark, director of the Cornell Bioacoustics
Research Program; elephant researcher John Hart, Wildlife Conservation
Society; elephant researcher Richard Barnes, University of California at
San Diego (standing); Katy Payne, research associate in the Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology; bioacoustics engineer Steve Gulick, Wildlife
Conservation Society; researcher Melissa Groo (standing); and elephant
researcher Andrea Turkalo, Wildlife Conservation Society. Photo courtesy
of Katy Payne. |
 Vanessa Baxter, a Cornell student of neurobiology and behavior, listens to
African elephant calls recorded from a microphone array while watching the
same elephants on videotape. She is trying to correlate elephant calls with
behavior patterns, in preparation for the planned monitoring of forest
elephants, which will be conducted without video surveillance. Photo by
Charles Harrington/Cornell University. A high-resolution copy of this photo (1800 x 1200 pixels, 900K) is available here. |
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