Sound CheckPeter the elephant joins in on piano jam session
Music is always more fun when someone plays with you, but how would you feel about an elephant joining in on your piano solo?
According to the clip's description on YouTube, classical and contemporary pianist Paul Barton was playing a tune on the piano for a five-year-old elephant named Soi, when another elephant named Peter came along to join in on the fun.
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"Peter heard the music and made [a] deviation from the mud road (behind the tree) to the piano," Barton writes of the elephant that lives in Ayutthaya, Thailand. "I suddenly felt something strange sucking the back of my head and had an unexpected duet partner."
Viewers have been curious about the "strange sucking" action Peter displays in the clip while Barton is playing the piano, but he reassures them that it is an act of affection.
"It's actually a kind of elephant kiss," the pianist explained. "An Asian elephant puts his/her trunk on someone, makes a seal by pressing the trunk tip flat, then sucks. You have the impression of being kissed by a giant rubbery vacuum cleaner. The elephant sucks a moment he pulls the trunk away and often gets amused by both the 'pop' and, sometimes, the surprised human reaction associated with the experience."
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This isn't the first time we've seen an elephant get musical.
Back in May, we were wowed by a 36-year-old Asian female elephant named Shanthi from the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. that likes to play the harmonica as well as use her surroundings to make music.
"I think that Shanthi is musically inclined," elephant keeper Debbie Flinkman says in the video. "When Shanthi interacts with her environment, her indoor stalls and her outside area, she likes to tap on things with the tip of her trunk, she likes to flap her ears against things that make noise, she likes to rub her leg up and down brushes and repeat that noise…I mean, if it's that important to our breed, these really intelligent animals ought to enjoy music."
