Elephants Can 'Sense' Rainstorms

It seems that elephants are the new, unconventional weathermen, as they can "sense" rainstorms from as far away as 150 miles, according to new research.

Scientists suspected that elephant herds could somehow detect faraway thunderstorms given their abrupt travels during seasonal shifts.

A team from Texas A&M, the University of Virginia, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Utah used GPS trackers to monitor the movements of 14 elephants in Africa's Namibia region over seven years, a region with a distinct rainy season.

"The onset of the rainy season there is very abrupt and lasts just a few weeks, and the rest of the time, there is little or no rain at all," Oliver Frauenfeld, assistant professor at Texas A&M's Department of Geography, said in a statement.

Lucky for the elephants, they seem to be able to "sense" the life-sustaining rain amidst this typically hot and dry climate. Even if a storm is happening up to 150 miles away, these giant herbivores can detect it, and that, the study shows, was the direction in which they pointed their trunks for migration.

"We don't know if they can actually hear the thunder or if they are detecting other low-frequency sounds generated by the storms that humans can't hear. But there is no doubt they know what direction the rain is," Frauenfeld said.

"Our study suggests that the elephants are responding to a common environmental signal," he added. "The change in their movements occurs well before - from days to weeks - of any rain in the elephants' current location."

While the researchers still aren't sure what specifically causes the elephants' keen weather sense, they are hopeful that the information could be of use in conservation efforts. The poaching trade in Africa is still running rampant - 64 percent of the elephant population has been lost in the past decade - but if wildlife officials can use weather data to predict where elephants will go, they have a better chance of protecting the herds.