Thai Elephants Aren’t Bilingual

Thai elephants that have been brought to Sumatra to help tame their wild Indonesian cousins are having trouble picking up the local elephant lingo, the daily Waspada has reported.

Geusyik Hasbi, a village chief in the province of Aceh where wild elephants have been gobbling up rice, coconuts, bananas and other plantation crops, said the latest campaign using trained elephants and animal tamers from Thailand is doomed to failure, Waspada reported last week.

Hasbi, who said he has been dealing with elephants for 25 years, told the Sumatran newspaper that the host Indonesian elephants do not understand the trumpeting sounds of the Thai pachyderms. He said elephants are generally very “talkative” in their herds and therefore it is important to get the sounds right.