Meet Rocky the orangutan - the giant ape who has learnt to TALK like a human - Mirror

The eight-year-old primate has astounded scientists by copying words and sounds - then reproducing them in a 'conversational context'

This is Rocky the orangutan - a great ape who has learnt to talk like a human.

The eight-year-old primate has astounded scientists by copying words and reproducing them in a "conversational context".

Researchers asked Rocky to play a game where he mimicked the tone and pitch of human vowel sounds.

Comparing Rocky's emissions against a large database of recordings of wild and captive orangutans showed they were markedly different.

Rocky was able to learn new sounds and control the action of his voice in the way humans do when they conduct a conversation, the scientists concluded.

They believe Rocky could be the key to understanding how human speech evolved.

Lead researcher Dr Adriano Lameria, from the University of Durham, said: "It's not clear how spoken language evolved from the communication systems of the ancestral great apes.

"Instead of learning new sounds, it has been presumed that sounds made by great apes are driven by arousal over which they have no control, but our research proves that orangutans have the potential capacity to control the action of their voices.

"This indicates that the voice control shown by humans could derive from an evolutionary ancestor with similar voice control capacities as those found in orangutans and in all great apes more generally.