A Stillness of Voice and Body

From "Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephants and Whales," On Being, August 13, 2015: 

Krista Tippett: You were listening to elephants, but you've also referred to elephants as great listeners.

Katy Payne: Yeah. They do something marvelous that I wish we would do more of the time. This is something you do find in Quaker meetings, actually, and in Buddhist meetings as well. The whole herd, and that may be 50 animals, will suddenly be still, completely still. And it's not just a stillness of voice, it's a stillness of body. So you'll be watching the moving herd, they'll be all over the place, they'll be facing all directions, doing different things. Suddenly everything freezes as if a movie was turned into a still photograph, and the freeze may last a whole minute, which is a long time. They're listening. When they freeze, they tighten and lift and spread their ears. This tells us — this, among other things, tells us that they're concerned with what's going on over the horizon.