These fearsome noises are actually elephants greeting one another. Glad to see you. Come a little closer. These are sounds of annoyance. The big bulls are telling the youngsters to hit the road. Back in 2000, Andrea filmed the death of a baby and the traumatized cries of the other elephants. These elephants kept poking the body over and over, frantically trying to coax the baby back to life. Then the elephants formed a procession that flied past the body. They’d feel it or they’d smell it and then they’d vocalize. It was like a funeral procession that went on three or four days. Must have been an amazing sight. They seem to recognize death and it upsets them. It sort of brought home how emotional these animals are. But it turns out that these vocalizations are just a small fraction of the sounds elephants make. Until a few years ago, scientists had no idea that most of what elephants are saying can’t be heard by the human ear. The base of their vocalization is infrasonic. In other words, the frequency on which their call is built is below what we can hear. The elephants use those low sounds to find one another in the dense forests where they spend most of their time.