14 DAY TRIAL // A team of specialists working with the University of Vienna has recently embarked on a journey to South Korea, their goal being to study how it is exactly that one elephant living at this country's Everland Zoo manages to articulate as many as five words despite its lacking human vocal chords.
Apparently, this Asian elephant named Koshik first started mumbling Korean words quite a few years ago, and back in 2006 the online community was introduced to a video showing it greet its handlers with a clearly articulated “annyong.”
In case anyone was wondering, “annyong” is the Korean equivalent of “hello.”
Seeing how, as far as native English speakers are concerned, Korean is one of the most difficult languages to learn, it need not come as a surprise that many were quite jealous at this elephant's skills.
Tree Hugger says that the five words Koshik now masters are the following: “annyong” (hello), “anja” (sit down), “aniya” (no), “nuwo” (lie down) and “choah” (good).
As previously mentioned, what puzzles scientists is the fact that this Asian elephant somehow manages to utter said words despite its lacking human vocal chords.
According to Dr. Angela Stoeger, Koshik succeeded in overcoming this biological “flaw” that would otherwise keep it from speaking by using its trunk in a rather innovative manner.
“He always puts his trunk tip into his mouth and then modulates the oral chamber,” the researcher explains.
“We don't have X-rays, so we don't really know what is going on inside his mouth, but he's invented a new way of sound production to match his vocalizations with his human companions,” Dr. Angela Stoeger went on to add.
Just like in the case of the talking whale, it is believed that Koshik learned to mimic human speech because it grew up in captivity.
Thus, rather than interacting with others of its kind, it got to spend a lot of time in the presence of its handlers and felt the need to somehow bond with them.
The video below shows Koshik "talking" to one of its trainers.
