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Greetings!
We are delighted to share the latest news from ElephantVoices with you. From the field to the digital space, our work continues to be guided by a simple but powerful mission: To secure a kinder future for elephants by deepening the understanding of their complex voices and behavior, and inspiring people to care. In this edition, we tell you about a major milestone, give you updates on our research and our educational outreach, and share the exciting news that
Dr. Mickey Pardo will be joining ElephantVoices in mid November. We have also started to work on a new ElephantVoices website, and hope to launch it before the end of first quarter next year.
We hope our updates give you a window into our efforts to make a difference for elephants and inspire your continued support for their wellbeing.
| | Your contribution means so much - thank you, | | A Major Milestone - 50 Years of Elephants | | In 1975, at just 19 years old, Joyce began studying elephants in Amboseli, Kenya, with Amboseli Elephant Research Project founder, Cynthia Moss. What started as curiosity soon became a lifelong commitment to listening to elephants, learning from them, and helping to ensure their survival. | Today, Joyce is a world authority on elephant behavior and communication. Together with her colleagues her contributions to science include the discovery of musth in African savannah elephants as well as the findings that their communication includes infrasonic frequencies, that they are capable of vocal imitation and that they create and use names for one another. Compiling her observations she and her husband Petter Granli created The Elephant Ethogram, a unique, online library of African savannah elephant behavior and communication. | |
Joyce has used her scientific findings to advocate for compassionate conservation and improved elephant welfare. Her early finding that poaching was destroying the fabric of elephant society contributed to a successful campaign to ban the international trade in ivory in 1989. Her understanding of elephant behavior, and the importance of social learning and role models in elephant society, have been key to the adoption of more humane elephant management practices. Her work has helped to shape conservation policy and influenced the way we think about the capacity of animals to feel, connect, and live rich social lives.
As Joyce marks 50 years of studying elephants, we celebrate her dedication, passion, and courage. Her journey is a reminder that when we take the time to listen and observe, the natural world has so much to teach us.
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A tribute to Dr. Jane Goodall
1934 - 2025
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Joyce: "Jane has inspired me since I first heard her speak in 1967, when I was just a young girl. To the very end she worked tirelessly and selflessly to make the world a better, kinder, more compassionate place. She implored us to open our hearts to the natural world and to non-human animals. And she inspired in us hope that we, too, could change the world - through our own actions. Jane has passed the torch to us to carry on - we must, each one of us, step up and carry her flame and ensure her legacy and love lives on.
Asante sana, Jane!"
Joyce paid tribute to Jane on BBC Radio 4 'Inside Science'. You can listen to what she said here if you are in the UK.
| | Important information about our Facebook page | | |
As some of you may know, our official Facebook page was hacked in July, cutting us off from more than 350,000 followers. Despite two months of persistent effort in contact with Meta, we were unfortunately unable to regain access. This has been a distressing experience, but determined to move forward we have established a new Facebook page.
We would be extremely grateful if you would follow/like our new page, which you can find here. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for standing with us through this challenge.
| | Dr. Mickey Pardo joins ElephantVoices | | |
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We are thrilled to share the news that in mid November Dr. Mickey Pardo will be joining ElephantVoices as Senior Scientist.
We began collaborating with Mickey in 2016, at the beginning of his career. With Mickey as lead author, we have together published three manuscripts on elephant communication and cognition. One, published last year, documents the extraordinary discovery that elephants create and use names for one another.
Mickey will help to coordinate the collaborative work we are engaged in with the Earth Species Project and with Gasper Beguš' linguistic team at the University of Berkeley as well as furthering our own internal analysis of elephant communication using linguistic tools and AI/machine learning. At a later stage he will carry out field work. In this regard, we are happy to share with you that we are in the early phases of embarking on another collaborative venture with the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.
| | Tuskers: Brotherhood of Elephants | | |
For the past two years, we have been involved in the making of a PBS film on the lives of male elephants, Tuskers: Brotherhood of Elephants, filmed in Amboseli, Kenya. Joyce’s brother, Bob Poole, his wife, Gina, and Tom Stafford, the husband of ElephantVoices' Communications Manager Selengei Poole-Granli, all had key roles in this production.
Last year, both Joyce and Selengei joined the film team in Amboseli - Joyce as Scientific Advisor, providing guidance during the filming, and Selengei capturing behind-the-scenes photographs. This year, Selengei served as Associate Producer, assisting with fact-checking and annotating the script. ElephantVoices contributed the recordings of elephants and Joyce laid the soundtrack for their voices.
The film’s main characters Craig, Pascal and Esau are all males whose voices we have recorded and whose behaviour we have monitored. All are featured on The Elephant Ethogram. Esau comes from Amboseli's EB family, whose voices make up a significant part of our audio collection. He is the son of Ella, Echo’s sister. Born in central Amboseli, Kenya, Esau, now a mature male elephant with very long tusks, spends much of his time in Tanzania where trophy hunting is allowed. During the filming a decision was made to place a satellite collar on him in an attempt to protect him. In addition to highlighting the fascinating behaviour of male elephants, the film focuses on the threat to male elephant society by trophy hunters.
Tuskers: Brotherhood of Elephants premiered at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in late September. Follow our social media channels for updates on airtimes!
| | The ‘Bobmobile,’ with Tom operating the jib arm while capturing footage of Donner in musth. | | |
In June Joyce spoke with Bioneers about elephant behavior and communication. You can read - and listen - here.
She also joined host Amy Martin for on Threshold Podcast to discuss her life’s work. You can listen to it here.
| | | Thank you for being there for elephants! | | Follow us on Social Media to keep up to date on all things ElephantVoices. | | ElephantVoices is a registered 501(c)(3) charity in California and the District of Columbia. | | | | |
