Talking Elephant

A sixteen-year-old Asian elephant named Kosik has been found to echo eight words back to his keeper. Staff at the South Korean amusement park say that Korik 'says' words such as 'yes', 'no', 'sit' and 'lie down' by putting his trunk into his mouth and shaking it whilst exhaling.

It is not known whether Kosik knows the meaning of the words, but spectograms show that the elephant's voice frequency is a 94% match with his keeper's voice, prompting speculation that he is trying to bond with the keeper by copying the noises.

Video can be found here.

(Thanks, Nettie.)

Animals

Posted on Mon Oct 02, 2006


Comments

I've seen the elephant video. Its convincing but it looks like he can only say kwah(I have no idea what it means, or even if its spelt like that)it could be fake but what about the computers showing the frequency? A few things I will ask other people reading this.Does anyone know Korean? Is there anyone who is an expert onelephants? Could they start mimicking this sort of thing? And wha isKosik actually saying?
Posted by J  on  Mon Oct 02, 2006  at  09:57 AM
Unfortunately I don't have any articles on me, but talking elephants supposedly aren't uncommon. If they bond with human instead of other elephants, some learn to produce human vocalizations. I've heard of one that speaks English, but I can't remember her name or the name of the book that I read that in.
Posted by Iria  on  Mon Oct 02, 2006  at  01:52 PM
That's pretty cool and I want to see more about the one Iria mentioned (I don't have time to look it up right now). And for anyone else that watched the video, did anybody think those news anchors were in the least bit funny?
Posted by Archibold  on  Mon Oct 02, 2006  at  05:02 PM
Hmmm, reminds me of the joke of Belgian comic Urbanus about the arithmetic French pig...:

Farmer: "How much is 3 x 3?"
pig: "neuf..."
Farmer: "and 5 + 4?"
pig: "neuf!"
Farmer: "now, 12 - 3 ??"
pig: "neuf!"
Farmer: "you see, it can count!"
Posted by LaMa  in  Europe  on  Tue Oct 03, 2006  at  03:34 AM
Ahem.....:

The Elephant Song

Tell me said the elephant
Tell me brothers if you can
Why all the world is full of creatures
Yet we grow in fear of man
Tell me said the elephant
tell me why this has to be
we have to run from man and hunter
never safe and never free

refrain:

-people kill without regret
although they fly by jumbo-jet
let the word all may remember
let the children not forget.

Gentle is the elephant
Pulling loads and everything
we love to hear the children laughing
when we,re in the circus-ring
Happy was the elephant
Happy was his jungle life
and then they came, the cruel hunters
with their rifle and their knives

refrain:...

Listen, please listen, said the elephant
if we want the world we know, to stay alife
Then man and beast, we must work together
And together we will survive

Listen said the elephant
It is conservation time
So take the warning when we trumpet
For the future of mankind

refrain...

Sorry, couldn't resist (and yes, I am old enough to remember Kamahl's Elephant Song...)
Posted by LaMa  in  Europe  on  Tue Oct 03, 2006  at  03:44 AM
Thanks Iria.If you remember please post it.Its cool and its possible Kosik might understand what hes saying.Maybe hes going to use his talent to command all elephants into a huge army and overthrow mankind!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wouldn't scoff . It might be a joke but there are arithmetic animals.Ive also seen a dog that can talk and the best animal at talking is a parrot called Alex.The most arithmetic animal everwas a horse called Morroco who lived in medieval times.
Posted by J  on  Tue Oct 03, 2006  at  09:30 AM
Thanks a lot LaMa, now my head's filled with that song the WWF brainwashed my entire (primary) school with :/
Posted by RAMChYLD  on  Wed Oct 04, 2006  at  12:07 AM
Farmer: "how much is 12-4?"
pig: "neuf"
Farmer: "What?? you bloody..." -kicks the pig-
pig squeals: "huit, huit, huit"
Posted by Lukas  on  Wed Oct 04, 2006  at  12:35 AM
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