Cavity Had ‘Talking Elephant’ Speechless

What’s worse than a giraffe with a sore throat? A talking elephant with a toothache.

That’s what happened to Batyr, the elephant at the Karaganda Zoo in Kazakhstan, who made headlines in 1983 when zoo officials claimed he could talk and now is back in the news again.

Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, reported Saturday that the 17-year-old Batyr underwent a tricky operation to fill a tooth cavity. Two tranquilizer darts were used to knock him out and dentists then found a cavity 2 inches in diameter. They filled it with material weighing slightly more than two pounds, according to the newspaper.

For a long time, Batyr refused to talk, Pravda said. But he’s back in form and “to the children’s delight” at the zoo, uttering his entire vocabulary in Russian of “Batyr is good,” the paper said.

The article’s claims about Batyr’s vocabulary were considerably scaled down from the last time he made the news. Then, accounts by the official news agency Tass said Batyr could utter 20 phrases.

To prove his prowess, an official of the state radio and television network said, a tape was was made of the talented animal in action but that, alas, Batyr sat on the tape recorder and ruined the evidence.