At the Everland Zoo in South Korea, a 22 year old elephant, Koshik, used his trunk to imitate human speech. For many years the zoo claimed that he was capable of this this, but not until now scientists finally confirm that the elephant has the ability to pick up words. This 5.5 ton animal has learned five korean words. He puts his trunk in his mouth and produces the word. Scientist say, that even though the Korean language has fewer consonants than the English language, it makes it easier for an animal to reproduce the word. But, they also said that no matter the language Koshik's ability is not an easy task and very rare in any animal. He can reproduce vowel sounds better than he can with the consonants. Researchers say that the sound frequency of his words are the same as his trainers, giving the best evidence that he is actually imitating human speech! Koshik's was separated from two other elephants when he was younger, and zoo trainers think he is trying to reproduce human speech to bond to his new human family.
NOS Themes
- Science is based on evidence
- Role of motivation and curiosity
- Importance of repeatability
- Science is collaborative
- Role of chance
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This is a very interesting article Tyler! I read a similar article on how and why parrots talk, and it seems that in many ways, the elephant speak is more complex than that of the parrot. With parrots, they are merely reproducing sounds that they here without actually understanding what they are saying. After reading your article, it appears that this elephant actually seems to use its words in context and understand them. Here's a link to the article that I read if you want to check it out:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ehow.com/about_4597861_why-do-parrots-talk.html
I wrote a blog similar to this one, but it was about a species of monkey that could talk to each other in a way that was similar to how humans speak, which didn't surprise me too much because apes are very similar to humans. This case however is with an elephant, which is very different. I think it is very cool and interesting that we are discovering animals that have their own language and also animals that are developing the ability to communicate with humans.
ReplyDeleteWow that is very interesting! I have always been interested in if humans could someday actually talk to other animals and this is one step closer to that. I found an article that said that four other animals could reportedly "talk" but they didn't know for sure. There was Hoover the seal, Blackie the cat, Alex the Parrot, and Lucy the Chimp. Lucy, however, only spoke sign language.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/05/14/mf.animals.that.could.talk/index.html
I think this is very interesting because I never though and elephant could do something like that. I know of other animals that can also do similar things like chimpanzees and dolphins who are know to be very intelligent. You never really hear about these things with elephants.
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