The first orangutan in the world nearly learned how to speak human language

Many scientists still believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, that humans originated from a species of ape, not from the sky, so they still studied our relatives to find understand how people evolved. Recently, an orangutan named Rocky is said to have learned how to emit vowels and almost simulates human language.

According to a study led by Dr Adriano Lameira of Durham University, published in Scientific Reports, the orangutan Rocky learned about 500 vowels from his trainer, which is similar to the possibility. The ability is that it will be able to speak, if you continue to receive further training.

The orangutan living in this Indianapolis zoo imitated the coaches' pitches and voices as they interacted with it.

It's not as simple as a crest or a parrot that is easy to learn to speak, in theory, monkeys, gibbons, orangutans, etc. cannot speak human language because they have thinner tongues and higher larynx than children. people, so their mouths cannot pronounce vowels. However, Rocky's case is different, the orangutan living in this Indianapolis zoo mimics the coaches' pitches and voices as they communicate with it. After comparing with more than 12,000 hours of sounds of more than 120 orangutans in the database they had, scientists confirmed that Rocky had learned 500 vowels. With the new vocabulary it learned, Rocky used to "communicate" with the coach whenever the two sides met.

In the past, scientists have concluded that when kept in captivity, orangutans will be able to gradually learn how to replicate in their sounds after a while listening to human conversations. With the new discovery in Rocky, this study opened up new perspectives on understanding whether primates can learn to speak like humans, as well as how language formed during gibbons. evolve into people.