An Asian Elephant in South Korea’s Everland Zoo, cannot just use its trunk to grab food and smell, it can even produce human sounds from it. Scientists confirmed last Friday that Koshik, is genuinely a pachyderm you can converse with!
Weighing 5.5 tons, 22 year old Koshik is an adult Asian elephant at South Korea’s zoo. For years its keepers have noticed how the elephant takes its trunk inside its mouth and moves it in such a way that it can imitate human words and sounds.
Scientists studied Koshik’s behavior and confirmed last week that the tusker did have the unusual talent. Their findings have been published in the online journal Current Biology.
The scientists believe that Koshik might have begun to imitate human words because it was lonely.
No Ordinary Trunk Call
Koshik can speak five different words of the Korean language by twisting and turning its trunk inside its mouth. These are annyeong” (hello), “anja” (sit down), “aniya” (no), “nuwo” (lie down) and “joa” (good), the paper says.
His keepers say that the elephant can also mimic the word “ajik” (not yet), but the scientists did not confirm this utterance. They believe that Koshik might not understand the meaning of these words, though he seems to be responding to them.
The researchers say that they could confirm that Koshik was really speaking like humans and not just uttering anything because most of his ‘words’ matched the frequency in which his human keepers spoke to him. They also found that the pachyderm is excellent with vowels with 67 percent similarity to human speech though with consonants he only scores 21 percent.
The paper also adds that Koshik’s unique feat represents “a wholly novel method of vocal production” because he uses his trunk to reproduce human speech, as per mercury news.
Koshik was separated from two other elephants at the age of five and the researchers believe it is this loneliness that triggered the need to bond with his trainer through a common language.
His trainer first noticed Koshik’s skills in 2004 and it was in 2006 that the elephant was publicised as one with human like speech. His growing reputation prompted Austrian biologist Angela Stoeger-Horwath and German biophysicist Daniel Mietchen to study him in 2010, zoo officials said.
Watch Koshik in Conversation with his trainer,
koshik-elephant-talks-korean-video
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Image via livescience.com
That was an amazing video. Koshik puts his trunk inside his mouth, probably to turn his tongue around? Or is it some other manoeuvre? I am loving this blog 🙂
Thank you Zephyr. Doesn’t Koshik’s incredible feat show that the human intelligence is too overrated. There are so many animals out there who have just the same amount of smartness to adapt to a situation. Thank you for your comment and appreciation. I am in love with your blog too…:) loved the post on Vidyasagar.