Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age – Woolly Mammoths Sense A Storm With Their Feet

Woolly mammoths had tiny ears as an adaptation to survive the extreme cold. However, this didn’t mean they were lousy listeners. In this exclusive new clip from Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age we see how woolly mammoths would have been able to sense a storm by detecting infrasound through their feet. Infrasound is lower than the human ear can hear, but in the modern era elephants regularly use it as a way to communicate. As scientific advisor on the series Dr Darren Naish told IFLScience, mammoths were a kind of elephant, so much of what we know about their living relatives can gives us clues as to how they behaved. “Everything that's true for living elephants was true for woolly mammoths,” he said. “We looked at the studies that have been done of elephant language. They make specific noises that mean specific things. We applied that to woolly mammoths and started asking: What were their senses like? What were their abilities like in terms of sensing their environment and listening to things?” “That's where [this sequence] comes from. [Infrasound] is a specific thing that's known to be true for elephants. It’s totally safe, in that case, to apply it to woolly mammoths, even though the fossil record is never going to show us that behaviour – that they could listen to things with their feet and detect infrasound to their feet.” Read more: https://www.iflscience.com/how-could-woolly-mammoths-sense-when-a-storm-was-coming-by-listening-with-their-feet-81615 Video credit: Apple TV Prehistoric Planet Ice Age