It's possible that orangutans and their recognizable reddish-orange fur are synonymous due to word association or overexposure in popular culture. However, the "orang" sound in their name has nothing to do with their distinctive coloring; in fact, the name orangutan literally translates to "person of the forest" in Malay. We may have underestimated how true the nickname is.
Dr. Adriano Lameira told Salon that they are "extremely intelligent, very similar to us, have cultures, and exhibit prototypical behaviors that are thought to be the ancestors of language."
Orangutans, one of our closest living relatives, have 96.4% of our genes. These highly endangered giant apes have a propensity for communication as well. Indeed, orangutans and other big apes have long been recognized as having advanced cognitive abilities. Despite their solitary nature, they are able to remember and communicate facts about the past or the future to others.
Currently, research shows that social dynamics influence linguistic communication among orangutans. The findings refute the widely held belief that orangutans have an innate ability to vocalize. They discovered that orangutan communication style is strikingly comparable to human expressiveness and depends on social impact.
It's interesting to note that orangutans in heavily crowded regions had greater individuality in verbal communication. Lameira compared the outcome to a city's array of available fashion options.
"There seems to be a premium on novelty," he said. "They frequently look for fresh options in the audio spectrum that they may employ. They constantly choose different word choices and inflections, almost as a display of personality to stand out. The problem is that because everyone tries to be original all the time, there is actually very little repertory that all people share.
It was, in his words, "a bit of a cacophony." The vocalizations of isolated orangutans were more likely to be recognizable, much as how longtime friends can fall rely on inside jokes or recognized phrases. In addition, isolation led to the emergence of more sophisticated repertoires.
"Like us, when great apes are exposed to different social settings, this molds how they communicate — which is basically what happens when a person is learning a new language, whether as a child or an infant learning the mother tongue or later as an adult learning a second language," Lameira explained.
Lameira was careful not to refer to the verbal abilities of orangutans or other large apes as a "language." However, the results of his team's research, which were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, indicate that the ability to generate language is not unique to humans. We were the first to arrive.
The secret to unraveling the origins of language in humans is to study giant apes. According to long-held theories, humanity's extraordinary evolutionary advancement over other hominids, excluding supernatural intervention, was the result of some enormous genetic jackpot. According to Lameira, there is increasing evidence, such as this report, suggesting the changeover was gradual.
Lameira continued, "We prefer to think of ourselves as superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, but it begs the question of how our language-using ability, which was a game-changer, came to be. The only possibility left by this conventional theory is that there was a significant jump that was abrupt, seemingly random, and unpredictable.
The paper even goes so far as to advocate the idea that big apes should have the same rights as people. In fact, Lameira said, these discoveries go beyond simply explaining human evolution. They should serve as a reminder to show more respect for what is really an additional branch of the same evolutionary tree.
He said, "There's not much that separates humans from these creatures. If they are susceptible to social pressure in the same way that we are, either they are slightly more human than we believed, or we are slightly closer to apes than we would want to accept.
In stark contrast to the human superiority complex, the poor living conditions of orangutans and other big apes in the wild demonstrate how poorly humans have managed our planet. Humanity has directly contributed to the debate of whether they even exist. Their declining population is a result of deforestation, hunting, and illicit wildlife trading. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there are only around 120,000 orangutans left in the wild, and they can only be found in the Bornean and Sumatran rainforests.
