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May 24, 2013

Strange But True!

Q. You know of people who “talk with their hands,” but what might an elephant talk with?

A. Amazingly, as reported by his zookeepers at South Korea's Everland Zoo, Asian elephant “Koshik” has learned to mimic five words in Korean by sticking his trunk into his mouth and creating human-like tones, says Susan Milius in Science News magazine. These sounds are said to remind Korean speakers of actual words: “annyong” meaning “hello,” “aniya” meaning “no,” “nuo” for “lie down,” “anja” for “sit down,” and the vowel sounds in “choah” for “good.”


 
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