4.14 Reading

Read the selection. Then answer the questions that
follow.

Elephant Orchestra

“Elephants like music,” says
musician and neuroscientist
David Sulzer. “If you play
music, they’ll come over.” At
a conservation center in
Thailand, he saw this for
himself. He watched elephant
trainers sing to the animals
to soothe them. Sulzer
already knew that elephants
could recognize melodies. He
wondered if they would play
music themselves.

So Sulzer collected a

band of elephants at the
center to find out. He first built a variety of huge,
unbreakable percussion instruments the elephants could
play with their trunks or feet. He built 22 such
instruments. These included drums, gongs, flutes,
cymbals, and king-sized xylophones the elephants could
play with a large mallet.

Sulzer’s instruments resemble traditional Thai ones

and sound like them, too. Sulzer soon found that
elephants were indeed musicians. They could bang,

​Read the passage

stomp, tap, and blow to play distinct musical notes. With
the help of the trainers, Sulzer got his elephant orchestra
to play Thai melodies the tuskers recognized.

The Thai Elephant Orchestra has been a success.

They have made three albums. And they’ll play for
peanuts (or bananas or apples). But the best part is that
these talented musicians help raise much-needed money
to house and protect other endangered elephants.

Open Ended

Do you like music?