Animals Like Us

Narrator: In every habitat imaginable,

if you look close enough,

you'll see that animals and people

have a lot in common.

Nothing beats a bit of pampering

down at the local spa.

Bands of pirates chase victims

until they hand over the treasure.

And love is in the air.

But to get this hunk's attention,

a girl's gotta take drastic action.

This is a new way of seeing the natural world.

Where wild animals act

just like we do.

One of the fascinating things about studying animals

is discovering how many aspects of their behaviour

have parallels with our own.

Narrator: Around the globe, animals continue to astound us

with their intelligence

and deep emotions.

The amazing thing is,

the more we learn about them, the more we realize...

animals are a lot like us.

Across the natural world, animals communicate...

and share information just like we do.

Sperm whales talk to other whales kilometres away.

They've even developed different dialects

depending on which pod they belong to.

Natterjack toads can croak over a kilometre away

when they're looking for love.

And the tiny prairie dog uses barks and squeaks as its words

that can warn others of a predator,

what direction its coming from, and even its colour.

But there is one animal

that takes interaction

and personal communication skills

to a whole new level.

The African bush elephant.

The true giants of the animal kingdom.

Found in 37 countries across the continent,

including the vast plains of Kenya.

Elephants are such a tight-knit group

and those herds can be up to 100 strong, all related.

Narrator: Leading these herds,

mostly made up of females and their young,

is the oldest female, known as the matriarch.

She is the oldest and wisest member of the herd

and she makes all the decisions.

About where to find food, where to find water,

how to keep the whole herd safe,

and especially how to defend and protect their young.

Narrator: Elephants are always on the move

and can travel up to 60 km in a single day.

So, keeping track of what every elephant

is up to in the herd

can be a tricky business.

One way they do this, is by constantly communicating

with each other.

That happens in different ways, but one thing's for sure...

these elephants are as loud as they are huge.

Elephants often trumpet

when they're surprised or being playful,

but there's a lot more to their sounds than just that.

Narrator: It's true.

Elephants can also squeal, cry, scream, roar, snort, rumble,

and groan to get their point across.

Elephants produce such an incredible range of sounds.

Not just in terms of the volume, they can go from these

really loud, high-pitched, trumpeting alarm calls,

also they can produce really low, gentle rumbles,

which are like contact calls to each other

while they're feeding.

Narrator: Rumbling will only get you so far.

Visual or non-verbal communication

is as important for elephants as it is for humans.

They can use their face, ears,

tusks, trunk, tail, and feet

to signal messages to one another.

They're body language masters.

Elephants use their whole body to communicate,

and even though their eyes are around 1.5 inches across

and seemingly much smaller than the rest of their body,

they become a lot more expressive

when they're alarmed or excited.

Narrator: Some gestures are easier to interpret.

Raised ears make them look more intimidating.

While they paw the ground if they feel threatened.

Of course, having a trunk opens up

all kinds of other possibilities.

Elephants use their trunks to communicate.

So they can greet one another,

a little bit like shaking hands.

But they can also be really tender with their trunks.

They can wrap their trunks around another,

a little bit like putting your arm around a friend.

Narrator: In addition to body language

and obvious vocalizations,

elephants have another,

more secret way of communicating.

Elephants can be seen standing still for hours,

ears out and eyes lowered as if lost in thought.

Finally, they leave.

And later, joins a herd kilometres away.

How did the elephant know where to go?

Elephants have an incredible ability to communicate

that we have only just started to understand.

It's called infrasound.

And they can communicate at 20 hertz,

which to us is impossible to hear,

but to them means everything.

Narrator: These low notes are produced by vibrations

in the vocal folds of the elephant's larynx

or voice box.

In essence, elephants sing or hum, a lot like we do.

But their huge voice box produces extremely low notes.

As low as the lowest notes of a pipe organ.

They can travel far and wide

and be picked up by any elephant in range,

usually anywhere within 3.5 km.

Their giant ears, like satellite dishes,

capture the waves.

The beauty of using low-frequency sound

to communicate is the sound can travel across the savannah,

across that habitat, with very little interference.

But also very few other species can actually

hear this frequency sound,

so it's almost like their own channel

to speak to each other.

Narrator: Elephants use as many

as 70 different sounds to communicate,

and 60% of them are actually infrasound.

It's like an elephant group text

and when one elephant communicates through infrasound,

all of them get the same message.

Narrator: These powerful messages are important.

They help male elephants find available females.

They also enable elephants to reunite

with lost friends and family members.

One rumble means, "Help, I'm lost!"

and another means, "Hey, it's okay. I'm over here."

We've only been carrying cell phones

for the past few decades,

but elephants have been making long-distance calls

for millions of years.

Narrator: Luckily for these elephants,

they don't get billed for these long-distance calls.

Incredibly, they all have an in-built ability

to stay in touch with their loved ones,

as they roam far and wide across the African savannahs.

Narrator: While most animals have to work hard

to survive and find food,

some get by with a healthy dose of deception and deviousness

Many birds in particular are notorious tricksters.

The cuckoo lays its eggs

in the nest of another unsuspecting bird

to escape parental duties.

Blue jays do a good job

of imitating different hawk species

causing other birds to scatter,

leaving the jays

with sole access to the bird feeder.

But there's another avian rogue that's more aggressive

and commits highway robbery in the air.

This is the magnificent frigatebird.

A large seabird,

easily recognized by its long, slender wings and forked tail.

They spend most of their life

flying effortlessly over the ocean

searching for fish.

These birds are masters at staying in the air,

and can glide for weeks on end without flapping their wings.

They achieve this with a really large wingspan,

eight feet, wing tip to wing tip,

and that's the largest wingspan-to-body ratio

of any bird.

And this is what allows them to stay airborne

for such long periods,

as they range over the ocean looking for food.

Narrator: When they do come ashore to nest,

magnificent frigatebirds favour tropical islands.

Like Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Sea.

The cliffs here are packed with breeding birds of all kinds.

There's stiff competition between parents

looking to feed their youngsters.

Fish is always on the menu,

but these giants of the sky have one weakness.

Even though the frigatebird is a seabird,

it can't land on water.

Its feathers aren't waterproof.

These birds don't have oil on their feathers,

and it's this oil that helps keep seabirds waterproof.

Oil glands are heavy, they take up a lot of energy,

and because these birds spend most of their lives on the wing,

they want to be as light and as streamlined as possible,

so nature got rid of the oil glands.

Narrator: So, it has to be careful

not to make a splash when it goes fishing.

That is a really hard way for a seabird to make a living

if it can't actually dive into the water.

Narrator: The magnificent frigatebird