Talking elephant is
something that we usually leave to other elephants. They make a series of low
rumbles whilst in a group. Their full range of vocal statements is quite broad,
ranging from contented rumbles through squeals to trumpets. Clearly other
elephants know what all this means, but we are left guessing.
Some humans are good
linguists while many of us are what are best described as failures and resort
to the goodwill of those speaking other languages to learn ours. I thought that
this was a trait of many English speakers, but is apparently more widely spread.
In the Everland Zoo in South Korea, Koshik, an
Asian Elephant, is on his own own and can rumble or chirp with no response from
his keepers who are his only friends. At twenty years old he has been feeling
the need for the occasional chat and so has had to compromise and learn a few
words of Korean.
In addition to learning the
Korean words for Hello, No and Good, he can also tell his keepers to Sit
Down or Lie Down. Stoeger et al have
studied Koshik’s linguistic abilities by listening, of course, but also by recording
the spectral pattern of what he says (1). They show a good match between
Koshik’s utterances and a human saying the same thing.
The sound frequency lies
clearly between the low frequency rumbles and the high frequency chirp. It
isn’t the usual frequency for talking elephant; so it seem that we have a
talking elephant who not only talks elephant, but who has learnt a few words of
Korean.
It turns out that this is
quite a feat for a talking elephant; as they don’t use that frequency range
beloved of humans, so how does he do it? He sticks his trunk into his mouth to
modify the sound coming from his vocal chords. Clearly this will limit his conversation,
as it is difficult to carry out a long conversation with your mouth full of
trunk.
It is probably as much of
cry for help as anything else, though, as twenty or so years on your own with
no one to talk to must be hard.
