Orangutan mimics human speech

An orangutan has shown an ability to emulate human speech for the first time — a feat that gets us closer to understanding how human speech first evolved from the communications of ancestral great apes.

‘Rocky’ the ginger ape has astonished experts by producing sounds similar to words in a “conversational context”.

“This opens up the potential for us to learn more about the vocal capacities of early hominids that lived before the split between the orangutan and human lineages to see how the vocal system evolved towards full-blown speech in humans,” says lead researcher Adriano Lameria, from the University of Durham, UK.

Talking Orangutan from movies

Dr Zaius [from Planet of the Ape movies] was an orangutan leading member of the Ape National Assembly, Minister of Science and also Chief Defender of the Faith