Watch: This orangutan is uprooting what we previously knew about language

At first glance, this video of an orangutan imitating a trainer’s grunts may not seem incredibly significant. But primate researchers say Rocky, the 11-year-old orangutan in the video, could fundamentally alter how we think about spoken language.

“We don’t know exactly how human language emerged, but we do know that great apes have the cognitive ability to understand language,” said Robert Shumaker, vice president of conservation and life sciences at the Indianapolis Zoo. “We can no longer say that humans are the only species who can learn new vocalization and control [it] using the vocal folds or voice box.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/07/28/what-the-first-orangutan-to-speak-means-for-humans/