If you have ever considered sneaking into a zoo at night then we have found a reason why you really should. Although during the day giraffes remain incredibly quiet, we now know that night they produce a low humming sound. This low hum was discovered recently by scientists and is the first clue in understanding how giraffes communicate with each other. Read on to find out more.
Giraffes are a dream to predators in the wild. They are not particularly fast and are a big meal for an alpha animal. To remain safe they have excellent eyesight and remain very quiet. In fact, until now it was thought that giraffes didn’t communicate using vocal cords at all. Some did hypothesize that giraffes may communicate at a frequency that can’t be heard by humans but it was generally thought they they communicated using visual signaling.
That has all changed after a recent study recorded almost 1000 hours of giraffes over eight years. While there was a lot of silence on that audio recording they soon started to notice something incredible. While the giraffes main totally quiet during the day, at night they produce a low hum. The hum is audible to the human ear, although barely, at a frequency of around 90 hertz.
Scientists now believe that giraffes do communicate during the day with their visual actions. Yet at night when it is darker and they want to communicate they rely on their hum.
So far scientists have not discovered what the hums mean and this may take a few more years of recordings and investigation. However, based on the behavior of other animals with a similar social structure it may convey things like age, gender, herd dominance and more.
This incredible revelation shows there is still so much to learn about the natural world. Giraffes who have been in zoos for many years are still providing us new information. Consider what incredible things we still have to learn about the rest of the world.
