美国科学60秒 SSS 2012-11-05

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In a recent podcast, we heard the beluga whale NOC change his voice's rhythm and pitch to imitate human speech.

Pretty impressive, but you ain't heard nothing yet. M K, an Asian elephant that appears to form actual words.  That’s annyong,Korean for hello.

His trainers claim to have taught K six Korean words. But how accurate is he? Researchers recorded the elephant at his home, the Everland Zoo in South Korea, and then played the recordings¹ for 16 native Korean speakers.

When the subjects transcribed² K's noises, they generally recognized five of the six words, including annyong. It turns out that Koshik can produce correct-sounding vowels³ 67 percent of the time, but his consonant⁴ pronunciation was only recognizable 21 percent of the time. The work is in the journal Current Biology.

To achieve his remarkable⁵ feat⁶, K sticks his trunk in his mouth, which changes the shape of his vocal⁷ tract⁸ so he can reproduce human sounds and pitch. However he learned this technique, it’s a good bet the elephant won’t forget it.

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