 Researchers: Elephants can tell the difference between human languages 
 
 By Agence France-Presse 
 
 Monday, March 10, 2014 16:25 EDT 
 
 African elephants can differentiate between human languages and move away from those considered a threat, a skill they have honed to survive in the wild, researchers said Monday. This handout photo provided by the University of Sussex, taken in April 2011, shows a wild elephant in Amboseli National Park in Kenya reacting to sound played by scientists in experiments that show they... (Associated Press) 
 
 That's what researchers found when they played recordings of people for elephants in Kenya. The scientists used voice recordings of Maasai men, who on occasion kill elephants in confrontations over grazing for cattle, and Kamba men, who are less of a threat to the elephants. Still other voices tested on the elephants included female Maasai speakers and young boys. All were saying the same phrase: “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming.” 
 
 The recorded voices were played for hundreds of elephants across 47 family groups during daylight hours. When elephants heard the adult male Maasai voices, they tended to gather together, start investigative smelling with their trunks, and move cautiously away. In yet another experiment McComb and Shannon altered female and male voices, making female voices sound male by lowering their tone and resonance, and males sound female by raising their pitches. - Discriminating between languages - 
 
 “The ability to distinguish between Maasai and Kamba men delivering the same phrase in their own language suggests that elephants can discriminate between different languages,” said co-author Graeme Shannon, a visiting fellow in psychology at the University of Sussex. "Making this kind of fine distinctions in human voice patterns is quite remarkable," said Emory University animal cognition expert Frans de Waal, who was not part of the study.
– Speak the wrong language in front of an African elephant, and she may not like you much. In a study at a Kenyan national park, researchers played recordings of different languages and voices for 47 elephant family groups, comprising hundreds of animals. The recordings included the voices of Maasai men, whose cattle-herding can cause run-ins with elephants. Kamba men, on the other hand, are often farmers or national park workers and present little danger to elephants, AFP reports via Raw Story. While the languages recorded were different, the spoken phrase was the same: "Look, look over there—a group of elephants is coming." When the elephants heard Maasai men, they prepared to protect themselves, sniffing around and moving together. But the voices of Kamba men didn't prompt much worry. "They are making such a fine-level discrimination using human language skills," a study author tells the AP. "They're able to acquire quite detailed knowledge." The elephants also appeared to be able to distinguish between men and women: Maasai women's voices didn't set off major alarm bells, nor did Maasai boys'. The findings come as humans and elephants overlap more often in the park, leading to occasional clashes, Discover notes. Indeed, the study is "sad because it suggests that the conflict between humans and elephants is growing," says an expert.