No remarkable differences in behavioral responses in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to playbacks of recordings of UAV infrasound and conspecific rumble calls

doi:10.16829/j.slxb.150977

Abstract

Abstract:

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology has been widely used in many fields of wildlife study and conservation. It remains, however, highly unknown whether the infrasonic noise generated by the flying UAV will impair the behavior of wild animals, especially species which are sensitive to infrasound. This study investigated the behavioral responses in captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at Beijing Zoo to playbacks of recordings of UAVs infrasound and the rumble calls of conspecific by employing a Habituation-Dishabituation paradigm. The results show that captive elephants displayed no dishabituation in response to the playbacks of UAV infrasound recordings even though they have got habituated to the playback of conspecific rumble call recordings. Under our experimental paradigm and with the playback equipment currently available, captive Asian elephants did not behaviorally discriminate between the two acoustic recordings. Whether UAV infrasonic noise interferes with intraspecific communication and social behavior in this species remains unresolved; future work should therefore employ UAV noise within an appropriate frequency range and high-fidelity playback systems to clarify this issue.

Key words: Infrasound, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Habituation-dishabituation, Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), Acoustic communication

摘要：

无人机技术已被广泛应用于野生动物研究与保护等诸多领域。然而，无人机飞行过程中产生的次声波噪声是否对野生动物，尤其是对次声波较为敏感的物种产生影响尚属空白。本文以北京动物园3头圈养亚洲象 (Elephas maximus) 为研究对象，采用习惯化‑去习惯化实验设计方案，探究了亚洲象对同类隆叫声及无人机次声波录音回放的行为反应。结果显示，亚洲象对重复回放的同类隆叫声录音产生了习惯化，然而，并未对无人机次声波录音回放表现显著的去习惯化行为反应。基于我们的实验设计和现有的回放设备，从行为学层面，圈养亚洲象未能区分两种声音的录音。针对无人机次声波噪声是否影响亚洲象个体间的通讯交流及其社会行为，未来需要选择合适频率范围的无人机噪声并采用高质量的回放设备，开展进一步的研究。

关键词: 次声波, 无人机, 习惯化?去习惯化, 亚洲象, 声学通讯

CLC Number:

Q958

Sijia SHEN, Lu WANG, Xu ZHAO, Tao LIU, Xuefeng LIU, Dingzhen LIU. No remarkable differences in behavioral responses in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to playbacks of recordings of UAV infrasound and conspecific rumble calls[J]. ACTA THERIOLOGICA SINICA, 2025, 45(6): 842-850.

申思嘉, 王璐, 赵旭, 刘涛, 刘学锋, 刘定震. 亚洲象对同类隆叫声和无人机次声录音回放的行为反应无显著差异[J]. 兽类学报, 2025, 45(6): 842-850.

Figures/Tables 11

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