Asian Elephants Sounds

[Evolution]

Is there a reason why the African Elephants have more sounds and sound animations than the Asian Elephants? I've been mostly playing with the Asian Elephants in my Phoenix Zoo, but now I'm building Reid Park Zoo that has African Elephants and noticed they have more vocals than the Asian Elephants. I don't know if anyone noticed this. I don't know if it's intentional, a bug that needs fixing, or just me.

 

[Cocolori]

I may be totally wrong but I feel like Indian elephants tend to be less vocal than African in real life? I know they both have a really wide range of vocalisations but the loud trumpeting which tends to accompany more 'aggressive' or agrgumentative social interatctions I think it would make sense as African elephants do seem to be less placid. Remembering of course that we may not even be hearing a lot of elephant communication as it is rumbling at a very low frequency.

Couldn't find anything on the internet with a straightforward answer so this might just be my impression and not true at all.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I remember reading somewhere that African elephants use infrasound, which carries long distances in open areas, but that's below the range of human hearing, so we wouldn't "hear" it in the game. I don't remember whether or not Asian elephants do this as well.

I've also read that Asian elephants make more soft chirping and squeaking sounds that African elephants don't, which makes sense in a forested setting where sound doesn't carry as far, so they maybe stand closer to one another and "speak" in more conversational tones? Species living in more closed-in habitats tend to use high pitched sounds to communicate more.

If you're out in the open like an African savanna elephant, maybe it's more profitable to "shout" to your comrades. So perhaps in the game, the louder, deeper vocalizations of African bush elephants are more noticeable to players. But this doesn't mean that Asian elephants don't vocalize just as much among themselves.

I don't know how African forest elephants compare. They are really rare in zoos.

 

[Bearcat9948]

I've never been around African elephants (at least not closely, obviously I've seen them in zoos), but I can tell you from firsthand experience from working with them, that Asian elephants are extremely vocal. I can't really think of a time they were quiet, to be honest with you, unless they're sleeping. They're especially noisy when playing or eating.

Now, I will also say that I haven't really noticed a discrepancy between the amount of noises or animations the two have in game, but it's possible I haven't been keeping close enough attention.