Sunday, February 3, 2013

Move Over, Parrot: Elephant Mimics Trainer At Zoo | Reduction

Move Over, Parrot: Elephant Mimics Trainer At Zoo

Bull Asian Elephant
Bull Asian Elephant by Rennett Stowe
License (according to Flickr): Attribution License
Excerpt:

"This is not the kind of sound that Asian elephants normally make, and it's a dead-on match of the speech of his trainers," says Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria. Numerous birds are exceptional vocal mimics, however this isn't really usual among mammals. Humans could do it, obviously -- however our closest primate loved ones cannot. Dolphins, whales and seals are understood to copy sounds. Dolphins could mimic weird computer-generated sounds, for instance, and one seal called Hoover famously learned to state expressions like "hello there" after being raised by a Maine fisherman. And researchers currently understood that elephants have some capability to mimic exactly what they hear. In 2005, analysts stated on a female African elephant that made truck sounds and a male African elephant that learned to chirp like the Asian elephants he coped with at a zoo.

People:

Koshik

Overall Sentiment: -0.032218

Relevance: 0.824288

Angela Stoeger

Overall Sentiment: -0.0416399

Relevance: 0.784476

SentimentQuote
0.209371"There had been always the question, 'Is this true, or is it a fake?' No one really believed it," says Angela Stoeger, ...
0.152094"And now we can actually go and check whether elephants in their natural communication system will use this ability in a similar way — but not as obviously," she says. ...
0.0613364"There are such different species that share this ability, and why would that have developed?" she asks, ...
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 3
  • Aggregate Sentiment: 0.4228014
  • Mean: 0.1409338
  • Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

Tecumseh Fitch

Overall Sentiment: 0.195941

Relevance: 0.764644

SentimentQuote
0.291249"This is not the kind of sound that Asian elephants normally make, and it's a dead-on match of the speech of his trainers," says Tecumseh Fitch ...
-0.0547684"There is no way this is just some sort of accidental thing, that the elephant was making normal elephant sounds and somehow got rewarded for doing it and then people started saying, 'Oh, he's a talking elephant,' " says Fitch.
-0.0818212"There is no way this is just some sort of accidental thing, that the elephant was making normal elephant sounds and somehow got rewarded for doing it and then people started saying, 'Oh, he's a talking elephant,' " says Fitch. "That's what I think makes it really convincing that this is speech mimicry."
-0.430169"His consonants are kind of blurry in the same way that mine might be if I'd had a half a bottle of Jack Daniel's or something," says Fitch.
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 4
  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.2755096
  • Mean: -0.0688774
  • Standard Deviation: 1.7320508075689

Hoover

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.503485

Jack Daniel

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.374153

Key:

  • Aggregate Sentiment is meant to be an indicator of an individual's overall sentiment.
  • The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
  • The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

PrintMedia: Current Biology

Overall Sentiment: 0.0451592

Relevance: 0.399941

Country: Austria

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.44509

StateOrCounty: Maine

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.433175

Disambiguation: Location | PoliticalDistrict | AdministrativeDivision | GovernmentalJurisdiction | USStateReferences:

Organization: University of Vienna

Overall Sentiment: 0.0981458

Relevance: 0.576823

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