hankyoreh

A 16-year-old elephant living at Everland, South Korea’s largest amusement park, has begun talking.

Kim Jong-gap, 39, a breeder at Everland’s zoo, had a strange experience two years ago. He heard a human voice coming from the elephant enclosure. Kim at first thought he was mistaken. But the sound continued, too vivid to not be real. When he approached the cage, to his astonishment he found that the voice was coming from an elephant named Kosik.

A male Asiatic elephant, Kosik can pronounce eight words: "good," "lie down," "no," "sit down," "not yet," "foot," "turn," and "turn around," in a voice nearly human. It has been thought impossible for elephants to talk because they lack an organ similar to the human tongue. However, an elephant in Kenya was confirmed to be able to imitate the sound of a truck. Zoologists have since accepted that some elephants can mimic what they hear.

But Kosik is the world’s first elephant that can imitate a human voice.

"In general, elephants communicate with each other in very low, deep sounds, which humans cannot readily hear. But unlike these sounds, it seems Koshik can make his voice audible through a system of air control, acheived by placing his trunk into his mouth," according to an Everland official.

In March, Everland Zoo asked Bae Myeong-jin, a professor of sonic engineering at Soongsil University, to scientifically analyze Kosik’s voice. Professor Bae recently released his results, which conformed that the elephant’s vocalizations nearly match the voice of his breeder, who has worked with Kosik for 10 years.

The zoo said that it could be made a laughingstock if it claimed outright that it has a talking elephant, which is why it is continuing to conduct scientific studies on the phenomenon. "In order to find out if Kosik knows the meaning of the words he is saying," a zoo official said, "we will continue to perform research after forming a team of experts including zoologists and veterinarians."