The South Korean Everland amusement park has an elephant and its keeper for the last ten years claims it can speak.
Don't read too much into this. On Friday the park officials said that its 16-year-old male Asian elephant, named Kosik, can make sounds imitating up to eight Korean words, including "sit," "no," "yes," and "lie down.
That seems more plausible. There have been studies that suggest elephants can mimic sounds, but the park claims that Kosik displays the ability to imitate a human voice.
Why would elephants want to speak the human language? Perhaps scientists would need to do more research to figure that out.
One possibility is that some elephants have decided to learn a second language.
No comments:
Post a Comment