Zoo employees were the first to notice his "speech", but he soon delighted zoo-goers at large by appearing to ask his attendants for water and regularly praising or (infrequently) chastising himself.

By 1979, his fame as the "speaking elephant" had spread in the wake of various mass-media stories about his abilities, many containing considerable fabrication and wild conjecture.

While pronouncing words, only the tip of the elephant's trunk is clamped inside [the mouth] and Batyr made subtle movements with a finger-shaped shoot on the trunk tip".Various audiovisual recordings were made during Pogrebnoj-Aleksandroff's studies of Batyr and some of these have been transferred to Russia's Moscow State University for further study.

Batyr's lexicon list was compiled from audiovisual records, scientific researches and statistical data from eyewitnesses who heard the elephant themselves.

He told a correspondent from the Young Communist League newspaper that it all began three years ago when a startled night watchman reported that he had heard the elephant talking to itself.