Tusk force: how Al is deciphering the secret language of African elephants

A groundbreaking observation project may protect herds from poachers and one day allow us to communicate with them. Mélanie Gouby reports from Nouabalé-Ndoki national park in the Republic of Congo

- Mélanie Gouby

On a grey tarp spread on the forest floor, Onesi Samba had laid out his team's equipment: orange and blue ropes, carabiners, a harness and two khaki-coloured waterproof plastic cases. The Congolese researcher paced back and forth for a few minutes in the undergrowth, looking up at tall ebony trees and black moambes in search of the perfect branch.

A few minutes later, Samba's colleague, Roseline Lakita, scaled a rough-barked limbali, pulling herself up through a suspended system of ropes and pulleys to reach a V-shaped branch 10 metres above the ground, where she secured one of the khaki boxes. Inside the case was hidden a microphone designed to record unsupervised for up to three months, eavesdropping on the secret lives of creatures living in this remote corner of the Congo Basin rainforest.

Samba and Lakita are part of a groundbreaking bioacoustics research programme based at Cornell University in the US. Founded in 1999 by Katy Payne, one of the originators of this booming scientific field, the Elephant Listening Project (ELP) has deployed more than 50 devices over nearly 1,250sq kilometres of the Nouabalé-Ndoki national park, in the Republic of the Congo. By recording the voices of central Africa's forest elephants, they have been able to track their movement and protect them from poachers. More excitingly, they hope that one day they will also be able to decipher the voices' meaning.