Dr. Joyce Poole of ElephantVoices was featured on Voice of America’s “Our Wild World,” hosted by Eli Weiss. Joyce is one of the world’s most foremost authorities on elephants and she has studied the social behavior and communication and cognition of the African elephant for 30 years. Her and her team have formed the world’s longest study and unparalleled body of knowledge on this subject.

Elephants are highly cognitive and communicate not only through and sounds that we can hear, but through sounds that we cannot hear and through gestures. Joyce has been deciphering their language through documenting, recording and photographing their society and movements for more than thirty years. Individual elephants not only know each other’s voices but they also recognize ours. Joyce talks about what she’s learned through decades of research that tell us why we need to stop ourselves from bringing this animal to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the interview here.