Elephants Can Listen with Their Feet!
When Tim faced me and issued a low rumble, I couldn’t tell if it was the vibration of his sound or the pounding of my heart that I felt coursing through my body. From The Wisdom of Elephants, Kathy Karn
Big Tusker Tim ©kathykarn
The miracle of elephant feet has been circling my peripheral thinking. That’s how ideas for my blog often show up. There’s an idea, I notice it as it comes and goes. I watch my emotional reaction, is something stirred? Yes! Elephant feet are extraordinary.
Reteti Elephant Sanctuary ©kathykarn
Elephant feet emerge like the slight swelling at the base of a tree trunk. Their toenails look like scallops pressed onto the foot like shells into soft clay. If you had x-ray vision, you’d see the largest animal on earth stands on its toes with a huge fatty pad underneath supporting the bones.
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On the outside these pads are flat, crusty looking round cushions. This is where the miracle part increases tenfold. Elephants can listen with their feet! It’s called seismic communication. The low frequency sound waves of an elephant’s rumble can travel several kilometers under the ground as well as through the air on the savannah.
Elephants triangulate the two types of vocal signals using both their ears and their sensitive feet to tune in to the direction, distance and content of a message. They can distinguish the difference between a threat nearby or far away by how they receive the information. These tremors are felt by other elephants even as far away as 8-10 kms through special nerve endings that travel up the leg bones to the inner ear transforming a physical feeling into a message to the brain.
Here’s a great video on how elephant feet are like radio transmitters and receivers. How Elephants Listen …. With their feet
©kathykarn
Even though they don’t have claws or toes that grab, elephants are incredibly dexterous. They use their feet to dig for water, nudge a sleeping baby awake or kick a fence down to raid a farmer’s field.
Wake up little one ©kathykarn
Then there’s the rhythmic footwork of grab and swing two-step.
Step 1: Grab a small plant in your trunk.
©kathykarn
Step 2: Swing your leg using your foot like a shovel to unearth the treat.
©kathykarn
I laughed out loud watching this tiny calf trying to imitate its mother and master the Grab and Swing Two-Step.
Practicing the Grab and Swing Two-Step ©kathykarn
You’d think animals weighing several tons would make a lot of noise parading around the savannah but walking on their tippy toes with those big, padded feet makes elephants incredibly quiet when they are on the move. The silence of my most memorable encounter with hundreds of elephants on the Amboseli Plain in 2020 left me with a feeling of an encounter with the sacred.
©kathykarn
They came in an unending procession, silent, steadfast, focused, like mourners to the bereaved. Elephants of all sizes walked directly towards us. When they were very close, I could hear them rumble. Otherwise, they were silent, except for the occasional trumpet call. Bird songs were louder than the movement of these mammoths. From The Wisdom of Elephants by Kathy Karn
Finally, as elephants migrate across the landscape, they generously leave gifts for creatures they share space with. Their large, round footprints can harbour entire ecosystems. In times of drought, their footprints are like miniature dry lake beds waiting to collect rain and ground water to form little ponds supporting life for an amazing array of small creatures like water beetles, tadpoles and mosquitoes. Frogs use these puddles to lay their eggs safely away from predators. The dotted trail left by elephant families travelling across Amboseli’s dry lakebed last January would allow tiny aquatic species to hop safely from pool to pool when rain came the following month.
Elephant feet, leave tracks of wonder across my heart and imagination. When we save nature, we save ourselves.
Amboseli Lakebed 2026 ©kathykarn
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