An elephant speaks

The zoo animal in South Korea speaks five words perfectly

That animals are smart, is well known. But they also can learn alien languages is a startling piece of news. Koshik, an Asian elephant at Everland Zoo in South Korea can actually be five words in Korean understandable by itself. There are words that he hears every day: "annyong" (hello), "anja" (sit), "aniya" (no), "Nuo" (lie down) and "choah" (good). For researchers, such "speaking animal" an exciting affair. You can draw conclusions on the evolution of language, learning words and the creation of music draw.

"The language of the people are two important aspects: the pitch and timbre," says Angela Stoeger of the University of Vienna, "apparently can Koshik both mimic the pitch and tone by imitating the human formant and pitch of his coach." This is remarkable given the size of the animal, consider the long vocal tract and other anatomical differences between elephants and humans. The elephant forme human words to the fact that it connects to the "horns" puts his trunk in his mouth.

Even from other African and Asian elephants is the imitation of sounds familiar, it is said in the journal "Current Biology". African elephants can roughly mimic the sound of a truck engine, and a bull elephant in Kazakhstan may be Russian and Kazakh words from him. These cases have never been investigated scientifically.

To identify whether words are really Koshik of themselves, researchers test subjects have played to the sounds of the South Korean elephant and asked what they have heard. They could not understand the words actually. But one thing seems certain: The elephant itself has no idea what he was "talking".