I should like to start by briefly describing the structure of an elephant society. Elephants live in piled societies. The main family unit consists of small groups of adult females who are related to each other and their young of both sexes. Now, the females remain in their families for life and are highly social, but male elephants leave their families at about fourteen years of age. They travel alone or congregate in small, loose groups of other males. Occasionally, they will join a family on a temporary basis. When males are ready to mate they will wander widely in search of receptive females. The elephant family may have members from three generations, the adults being females only. These families, in turn, network with a few other families, which are in fact distant kin. These are called bond groups. Even the bond groups could form part of still larger groups called clans. Like other social animals, elephants have to be able to communicate. What has confounded early naturalists was their ability to communicate over long distances. In one experiment, scientists embedded groups of elephants with radio tracking collars. What they observed about their behavior fascinated them. They found that there was some sort of coordination between families.