Different groups of apes have their own distinct languages much like humans, new research suggests.
Experts believe that defined hoots, grunts, barks and screams are specific to the groups in which animals live.
It was previously thought that our closest living relatives had a fixed repertoire of instinctive, automated calls.
But the new findings strongly suggest otherwise – and are expected to lead to new breakthroughs in what we know about how human language evolved.
Yet there are fears that if more of the creatures die off as the nature crisis intensifies, then many other clues will be lost forever.
The study’s lead author, Warwick University’s Dr Adriano Lameira, explained: ‘Great apes, both in the wild and captivity, are finally helping us to resolve one of the longest-standing puzzles in science – the origin and evolution of language.
‘We can now start conceiving of a gradual path that likely led to the rise of the talking ape, us, instead of having to attribute our unique verbal skills and advanced cognition to divine intervention or a random genetic jackpot.’
The research suggests that humanity’s distant primate ancestors had the tools for speech some five million years ago – roughly when the evolutionary lineages that led to modern humans divided.
Social interactions led to unique calls becoming common to particular groups, the researchers said, drawing comparisons to the evolution of countless languages among humans.
The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, saw the sounds of around 70 wild orangutans recorded in southeast Asia.
It was the largest analysis of its kind – spread across six populations in the swamps and low rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
The groups differed naturally in population density, with some mixing far less intensely than others.
In the more social groups, individuals communicated using a large variety of original calls.
They tried out lots of novel sound variants that were continually modified or dropped, researchers found.
But in more sparsely populated groups, the orangutans tended to use traditional and conventional calls and did not experiment with such a huge number of novel noises.
When they did introduce a new variant, however, they tended to keep it.
The researchers believe social influence on vocabulary is modest at first, before a fully operational primitive language – but increases steadily – leading to huge variety in modern language and those of our ancestors.
Dr Lameira explained: ‘Many more clues await us in the lives of our closest living relatives – as long as we manage to guarantee their protection and their preservation in the wild.
‘Each disappearing population will take with it irretrievable glimpses of the evolutionary history of our species.’
Orangutans are threatened with extinction because of the destruction and degradation of the forests where they live.
Three years ago, Dr Lameira and his colleagues discovered chimpanzees smack their lips together at almost the same speed as humans.
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Videos of the African apes during grooming sessions showed they could move them two to five times a second.
This closely matches humans – who are able to move their lips two to seven times a second.
Dr Lameira said: ‘Language defines human communication, but its evolution defies scientific explanation.
‘Great apes, our closest relatives, may hold the key to how language evolved in our lineage.’
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