An Asian elephant who lives in the Everland Zoo in South Korea has made headlines as the first talking elephant! Koshik began talking when he was 14 years old and currently has a vocabulary of six Korean words.
This is an exciting discovery not only because talking animals are a rarity, but because the mouths of elephants are built very differently than those of humans. An elephant is physically unable to blow out its cheeks to make an “O” sound, but clever Koshik has found a way around that: he uses his trunk to modify his mouth as necessary!
Watch the amazing video below of Koshik speaking four of the words he knows: choah which means “good,”annyong meaning “hello” andanjawhich means “sit down”!