Residents that live near a zoo have been complaining for nearly a year over rumbling noise they assumed to be coming from a boiler nearby. The sounds that the residents heard near the Paignton Zoo weren’t coming from a machine though. Instead it was the sound of giraffes humming.
Many of the residents decided to file a petition in order to get the city council to soundproof the rumbling sound that was coming from the giraffe house. The zoo’s crew members checked all of the equipment in the boiler room, but could never figure out what was causing the annoying noise.
Thanks to a recent research, it was discovered that giraffes are able to communicate in infrasound, which was creating the humming noise. The giraffes communicate in a frequency that’s entirely too low for the human ear to hear. Zookeepers were able to discover that giraffes have a sustained, harmonic frequency-modulated humming sound that would occur during the night.
A spokesperson for the Paignton Zoo said that he was shocked to discover the communication patterns between the animals. “It’s an interesting subject and could shed new light on behaviours and relationships among the species.“
