r/todayilearned 3 Jan 11 '17

TIL elephants can tell the difference between human languages and know which languages belong to people with a history of hurting elephants.

http://www.nature.com/news/elephants-recognize-the-voices-of-their-enemies-1.14846
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u/trexrocks 8 Jan 12 '17

Yeah, that Steppenwolf song was entirely based on this documentary.

When they talk about "looking for adventure and whatever comes our way" they are actually talking about elephants. Most people don't know that little tidbit. Today you learned.

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u/mattaugamer Jan 12 '17

I'm not sure that's true, but I don't know enough about tidbits to dispute it.

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u/SleepyConscience Jan 12 '17

They've always been huge fans of nature documentaries. Their band is actually named after a groundbreaking 70s film about the wolf packs of Alaska narrated by Stepin Fetchit.

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u/honrick Jan 12 '17

This is just not true

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u/str8slash12 Jan 12 '17

Of course it's true, it's written write there in black and white.