Asian elephant speaks!

An elephant in a South Korean zoo uses his trunk to pick up not only food - but also human vocabulary.

Koshik's talent was confirmed on Friday by an international team of scientists who said the 5.5-ton tusker may have started imitating human speech because he was lonely.

The 22-year-old Asian elephant can reproduce five Korean words by tucking his trunk inside his mouth to modulate sound, the scientists said in a joint paper published online in Current Biology.

Koshik can reproduce "annyeong" (hello), "anja" (sit down), "aniya" (no), "nuwo" (lie down) and "joa" (good), the paper says.

Everland Zoo officials in the city of Yongin said Koshik can reproduce another word, "ajik" (not yet), but the researchers have yet to confirm the accomplishment.

The researchers believe the elephant learned to speak out of a desire to bond with his keeper after he was separated from two other elephants.

The researchers, who have been studying Koshik since 2010, say he is vocalising the Korean words as a form of social bonding, rather than understanding the words' actual meaning.

In 1983, zoo officials in Kazakhstan claimed their elephant could reproduce Russian, but there was no scientific study.


AP