Elephant understands three languages, delivers speech to UN

A new talking animal story has hit the news. And what’s the latest species to magically develop the gift of speech? A cat? A lemur? A paramecium?

No, this time it’s an elephant.

Let’s rank the headlines from worst to best.

Elephant Speaks Human Language in Seoul
No, he does not. Human language requires skills that even intelligent animals do not show.

South Korean elephant knows eight words
And how do they know that? Were there any attempts to test the elephant to see if sounds and concepts were linked?

Park workers said it’s unclear if Kosik knows the meaning of the sounds he makes.

Oh. I guess it would help if the headline writer read the article first.

South Korean amusement park showcases ‘talking’ elephant
Scare quotes? That’s better, but mimicking isn’t the same as talking.

First Parrots, Now Elephant
This might be okay, if they meant “First, parrots were mistakenly thought to have language ability, and now an elephant has been mistakenly attributed with the same skill.”

South Korean Elephant Mimics Human Sounds
Now we’re getting somewhere. This headline gets it right. Elephants can imitate sounds, including trucks, but imitation a language does not make.

Talking Elephant Surprises Scientists
Aarg! That’s worse! No scientists are even mentioned in the article! And ‘talking’ is too strong a term.

You can click the link for an audio clip, if you want to hear for yourself. But beware of uncritical reporting mixed with specious statistics:

Spectrograms show that Kosik’s voice frequency is very similar to his keeper’s when he makes human sounds with 94% accuracy!

What journalist uses exclamation points in a news story?