One of the most persistent mysteries about our own species' evolution is the development of complex language. How we managed to move from making simple grunts to advanced sentences in which we can now ...

Wendy Erb has spent countless hours studying orangutans in Borneo's tropical peatland forests in order to learn how male Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) communicate. While doing so, she ...

Researchers have discovered that orangutans possess vocal abilities similar to beatboxing, where they can produce two different sounds simultaneously. The study suggests that these vocal abilities in ...

In the dense forests of Indonesia, you can hear strange and haunting sounds. At first, these calls may seem like a random collection of noises but my rhythmic analyses reveal a different story.

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Editor's Note: The original version of this story misstated the journal that Lameira's team's findings were published in; they were published in Nature Ecology ...

Orangutan calls have a complex structure that was thought to be unique to human language. Short sequences are nested inside longer sequences, much like the way we assemble long sentences from shorter ...

Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of a local individual in an effort to survive and find a future home range, a new study says. The researchers have ...

Chantek, a 39-year-old male orangutan known around the world for his ability to use American Sign Language to communicate, has died at Zoo Atlanta. The zoo announced it was treating Chantek for ...

When it comes to motherhood, orangutans are animals of distinction. An orangutan mother will stay in close contact with her baby for up to nine years--longer than almost all mammals other than humans.