A disturbing new study was published this week by The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in which researchers outlined definitive evidence that elephants can, in fact, communicate, and that they’re really, really mean. This overturns years of previous research which had incorrectly labelled elephants as highly sensitive and caring animals. For more on this story, we talked to renowned zoologist James Lahr:

“It took us a long time to figure out their language, but once we did we were able to create a translation program that we thought would allow these gentle giants to impart their innermost thoughts to us. The first message we sent read ‘We have translated your language; it is an honor to speak with you.’ One of the leaders of the herd, a bull we called Babar, responded with ‘Took you long enough you fat dipshits.’ We were kind of taken aback. We recalibrated the machine, but when we resent the message, Babar responded with ‘You heard me right the first time; how could you not have with those freakishly massive ears? I mean Jesus, those make my ears look small.’”

Lahr continued to explain how during his team’s first conversations, several lab technicians ran from the room sobbing due to the elephants’ expert skill in identifying and exploiting insecurities through incredibly cruel insults.

At press time, researchers had crossed their fingers and hoped for better results from dolphins.