No remarkable differences in behavioral responses in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to playbacks of recordings of UAV infrasound and conspecific rumble calls
Received date: 2024-07-10
Accepted date: 2025-09-10
Online published: 2025-12-03
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.
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 . DOI: 10.16829/j.slxb.150977
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