Picture yourself walking through the African Savanna. The blue sky is wide-open above you. As you look around, you might see some trees scattered about, skinny and bare all the way up until the tip tops of their branches. There, the canopy of leaves spreads out like a flat carpet above your head. Yellow grasses sway in the warm breeze and brown, pointy-looking bushes dot the land. 

The bugs hum, the birds sing, and it fills the air around you. There are bigger animals here, too. Impala gather in a group in the distance. The males have tall spiraling horns that stick out above the crowd. There is also a herd of wildebeest, grazing or sleeping, with their calves running about. Strangest yet are nyala (pronounced nee-ah-la): hairier and darker brown than impala, they almost look like a fairytale character. These animals are all prey animals, and they call the savanna home. Although we can’t see them right now, there are predators that live here too: animals like lions, cheetahs, and leopards. 

Female Impala by Vince Smith licensed under CC BY 2.0 DEED

Two wildebeests (Connochaetes), Amboseli National Park, Kenya, East Africa by Diana Robinson licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Kariega game reserve nyala by Alcuin Lai licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The last animal we have to introduce to our story is a big one: the elephant. African elephants eat grass, bark, and leaves. Because they are too large to be eaten by predators, these animals are mostly safe out on the savanna. Don’t be fooled though: these gentle giants can be bossy. Because they’re so big, they can push the other animals around to get what they want. Maybe they want to be first in line at a watering hole, or to get the best leaves off of a tree. This isn’t the most polite thing to do, but it’s not their fault. No one ever taught them table manners!

Majestic African elephant in wild is licensed under CC0 1.0 DEED

If you’re lucky, you may get to see some of these different types of animals interact with one another. What do you think will happen when they meet? Two different prey animals, like impala and nyala, might ignore each other. They both just want to eat the tasty grass. You might see them next to each other with their heads down, looking for some to snack on. 

Some animal interactions don’t occur face-to-face, but instead happen through other ways of communication. For example, animals can hear each other from pretty far away. While you’re standing here in the savanna, a wildebeest may hear a bird sing, but it probably won’t think very much of it. It may pick its head up to look around, but then it will probably go back to eating. A wildebeest who hears a leopard growl, however, will probably have a very different reaction. When they hear a predator, prey animals become afraid. You can tell that this happens because the animals will lift their heads up high. That way, they can look over the tall grass to try to see where the scary noise is coming from. If they are scared enough, they might even run away. 

Now, with all this predator-prey talk, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the elephants in the savanna. What do you think will happen when these animals hear one? Elephants make a loud trumpet noise. They’re basically just blowing their nose! Elephants don’t eat other animals, but don’t forget: they’re very big and sometimes, they get bossy. Let’s watch what happens.

We’re back in the savanna with our herds of prey animals. You hear an elephant trumpet and you look around. Most of the animals’ heads pop up from the grass they were eating. They all look around for danger, just like they do when they hear a predator. At the sound of the elephant, however, only about half of the animals are so scared that they run. It’s mostly the wildebeest this time, stampeding in a cloud of dust. They have their calves to protect, after all. 

Can you guess why all of these animals might have acted so afraid of a silly elephant? If they heard something like a leopard, you could understand why they would be afraid: they don’t want to get eaten. An elephant isn’t going to hurt them though. So why did they run?

The first thing we have to remember is that the animals might not know that an elephant won’t eat them. Maybe they just hear that loud, scary noise and they just don’t stick around to find out what it was. Or, maybe they know what it is, and they’re worried that they’re going to get pushed around! They’re much smaller than an elephant, after all. Our last thought is that maybe, when the elephants trumpet, the other animals hear it and know that it might mean that the elephant is alerting its friends to some other danger. Our prey animals might be listening to what the elephants are saying to each other! 

Now that it’s just you and the elephants left on this savanna, you have plenty of time to decide what you think the answer is. It could even be all three; we don’t know for sure. Maybe, one day, you can go to the savanna in real life to test it and find out!

References:

Fletcher Robert J., O’Brien Amanda, Hall Timothy F., Jones Maggie, Potash Alex D., Kruger Laurence, Simelane Phumlile, Roques Kim, Monadjem Ara and McCleery Robert A. 2023 Frightened of giants: fear responses to elephants approach that of predators. Biol. Lett. 19: 20230202. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0202