East Africa's elephants face few threats in their savanna home, aside from humans and lions. But the behemoths are terrified of African bees, and with good reason. An angry swarm can sting elephants around their eyes and inside their trunks and pierce the skin of young calves. Now, a new study shows that the pachyderms utter a distinctive rumble in response to the sound of bees, the first time an alarm call has been identified in elephants.
… [T]he study suggests that this alarm call isn't just a generalized vocalization but means specifically, "Bees!" says Lucy King, a postgraduate zoologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the study's lead author.
When they hear buzzing bees, the pachyderms turn and run away, shaking their heads while making a call that King terms the "bee rumble."
This article highlights the different sounds animals make in different languages. Why can't animal sounds be something that is universal? As of right now there is no formal research done on this topic, but one possibility could be cultural influences on animal sounds, or that people interpret a sound based on their country's phonetic alphabet.
This Reuters inforgraphic succinctly summarizes the evolution and history of the English language, and what makes spelling in English so difficult. To quote the article, "English is the collector and assimilator of the world's words and retains all their color and irregularities."