Koshik The ‘Korean’ Elephant Can Say Annyong, Anja, Aniya, Nuo, And Choah

An Asian elephant named Koshik can imitate human speech, speaking a grand total of five words in Korean by vocalizing with his trunk in his mouth.

AsianScientist (Nov. 2, 2012) – An Asian elephant named Koshik can imitate human speech, speaking words in Korean that can be readily understood by those who know the language.

He can say a total of five Korean words, researchers report in the journal Current Biology, and those include annyong (hello), anja (sit down), aniya (no), nuo (lie down), and choah (good).

Koshik accomplishes this in a most unusual way: he vocalizes with his trunk in his mouth.

“Human speech basically has two important aspects, pitch and timbre,” said Angela Stoeger of the University of Vienna who led the research.

“Intriguingly, the elephant Koshik is capable of matching both pitch and timbre patterns: he accurately imitates human formants as well as the voice pitch of his trainers. This is remarkable considering the huge size, the long vocal tract, and other anatomical differences between an elephant and a human.”

For one thing, Stoeger says, elephants have a trunk instead of lips. While their large larynx can produce very low-pitched sounds, Koshik’s speech mimicry exactly copies the pitch and other characteristics of his human trainers’ voices. A structural analysis of Koshik’s speech showed not just clear similarities to human voices, but also clear differences from the usual calls of elephants.

There have been some earlier reports of vocal mimicry in both African and Asian elephants. African elephants have been known to imitate the sound of truck engines, and a male Asian elephant living in a zoo in Kazakhstan was said to produce utterances in both Russian and Kazakh, but that case was never scientifically investigated.

In the case of Koshik, the researchers confirmed that Koshik was imitating Korean words in several ways. First, they asked native Korean speakers to write down what they heard when listening to playbacks of the elephant’s sounds.

“We found a high agreement concerning the overall meaning, and even the Korean spelling of Koshik’s imitations,” Stoeger said.

But as far as the scientists can tell, Koshik doesn’t actually mean what he says.

It’s not completely clear why Koshik adopted his unusual vocal behavior, but the researchers suggest that it might go back to his days as a juvenile. Koshik was the only elephant living at the Everland Zoo in South Korea for about five years, and humans were his only social contacts during an important period for elephant bonding and development.

“We suggest that Koshik started to adapt his vocalizations to his human companions to strengthen social affiliation, something that is also seen in other vocal-learning species – and in very special cases, also across species,” Stoeger said.

Ultimately, Koshik’s language skills may provide important insights into the biology and evolution of complex vocal learning, an ability that is critical for human speech and music, the researchers say.

The article can be found at: Stoeger AS et al. (2012) An Asian elephant imitates human speech.

Link to video of Koshik speaking in Korean.

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Source: Cell Press; Photo: Current Biology, Stoeger et al.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

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