An orangutan can mimic human speech for the first time

(Image credit: Maurizio Gambarini/Getty Images)

published 30 July 2016

Researchers from Britain have taught an 11-year-old orangutan named Rocky at the Indianapolis Zoo to imitate human speech in a conversational context. This is the first time an ape has demonstrated such ability, and the scientists involved say Rocky's skills could offer important insight into the development of human language.

"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," said lead researcher Adriano Lameria. While it was previously assumed great apes could not intentionally modulate their sounds, Lameria said, this "research proves that orangutans have the potential capacity to control the action of their voices."

Watch a video of Rocky "talking" below, but don't expect Shakespeare: His vocabulary appears to be limited to one word, "hi," and it sounds more like "huh." Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.