Back in 2006, trainer Kim Jong-gap at the Everland Zoo watches as his charge, Kosik, makes audible sounds that resemble short commands.

I was so surprised to see an article in article in the NYT (Nov. 2, 2012) about Koshik (Kosik), the talking elephant in Korea. I had actually written a long feature article about Koshik in 2006 in the JoongAng Daily. At the time, a professor at Seoul National University was trying to get scholars who had done previous studies on elephants to collaborate with their research on Kosik- I see that it actually happened!

Here is a link to a Korean news page that has a video of Kosik. The sounds he makes are obviously not the same as humans, but are fairly articulate. Moreover, the sounds aren’t just coincidence. When elephants communicate among themselves, the frequencies are extremely low, which are impossible for humans to hear. Here is a link to the scholarly article, published in Current Biology. I love this section in their abstract:

“To create these very accurate imitations of speech formant frequencies, this elephant (named Koshik) places his trunk inside his mouth, modulating the shape of the vocal tract during controlled phonation. This represents a wholly novel method of vocal production and formant control in this or any other species. One hypothesized role for vocal imitation is to facilitate vocal recognition by heightening the similarity between related or socially affiliated individuals. The social circumstances under which Koshik’s speech imitations developed suggest that one function of vocal learning might be to cement social bonds and, in unusual cases, social bonds across species.”

Vocal imitation as a result of social bonds across species!!

I really must say that I admire his trainer, Mr. Jong-gap Kim, who is unbelievably dedicated to the animal. I remember talking with Mr. Kim who, for a time, was considered crazy by his coworkers because no one would believe that an elephant could produce human sounds.

Below, I’ve added the article that I wrote in 2006, because sometimes Korean websites are difficult to access outside of Korea.

“Although the pronunciation of the words was not entirely accurate, all of the people who listened to the sounds during a blindfolded test thought the sounds were human, which means that communication was achieved. Also, the elephant spoke several words in a row instead of repeating the same words, as if they formed a sentence,” Mr. Bae said.
While parrots have been commonly known to mimic human sounds, Kosik’s case is rarer. For one thing, elephants don’t make usually sounds that the human ear can hear unless they are angry.

▶ Trainer Kim Jong-gap shows a computer display comparing his and Kosik’s vocal patterns. Provided by Everland

“When elephants communicate among themselves, it is in frequencies below 20 Hz, which are not audible to the human ear. [Humans only hear sounds between 20 and 20,000 Hz.] During the Asian tsunami, elephants escaped to the mountains well before the tidal waves arrived,” said Kim Yang-bum, a veterinary doctor at Everland. “The trumpeting sounds which we associate with elephants are only made when they are agitated, which is not the case with Kosik.”