Orangutan Uses Sign Language to Make a Request

Sunday, 5 September 2010

Apes can't do sign language, can they? Well, perhaps they can after all. Here, Siti, a young orangutan seems to be asking for help to open a coconut. She makes a series of genstures to her human companion - and seems to be urging him to give the coconut a good whack with his knife. Her actions seem remarkably similar to those a young human might make.

So can orangutans really pantomime their desires? ScienceNews seems to think so - and blame our inability to spot this talent on our own dim wittedness. In other words, we just haven't noticed it before!

Researchers in Indonesia have come to the conclusion after going through records of observations going back thirty years. They maintain that their evidence shows conclusively that orangutans can mime their desires and going from the video above, it would seem that they were correct.

Image Credit Flickr User Bill and Mavis

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