Orangutan Communication is Eerily Similar to Ours

For centuries, people have asked  what makes us different from animals.

There have been a bunch of different  hypotheses for which human trait is the key ….

tool use, self-awareness, culture, or  our awareness of death, to name a few.

But one of the most accepted hypotheses is  that it’s our language that makes us unique.

Lots of species communicate. But as I’ll explain, that’s different.

And for a long time, scientists  have wondered where our special,   complex language skills came from.

Recent research on one of our relatives  may shed some light on that question.

Because there’s evidence that  orangutans may use language as well,   and it’s teaching us something about our own.

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Now one thing that you will have picked up on is that orangutans….

Aren’t our closest relatives. And it’s true that we’re more closely related to  chimps, bonobos, and gorillas than to orangutans.

But regardless of how far away  they are on our family tree,   they’re chatty enough that  researchers took notice.

First, a little backstory  on our giant orange cousins.  Orangutans are the largest  tree-dwelling mammals in the world,   and the only living great apes native to Asia.

The two most common species are the  Bornean and Sumatran orangutans,   which are found, unsurprisingly, on  the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

It’s sort of ironic to be talking about  orangutans in the context of language,   because they aren’t particularly social animals.