Meet 40-year-old orangutan obsessed with Jane Austen

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Most apes are obsessed with tyre swings and bits of fruit, but 40-year-old orangutan Albert has developed an unnerving obsession with Jane Austen's masterpiece 'Pride And Prejudice'.

The 200-pound primate reads up to 50 pages a day of the classic, which deals with manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in early 19th-century England, the Daily Star reported.

And he's so gripped that unless he's had at least half-an-hour of Elizabeth Bennet's travails with Mr Darcy, he won't sleep at night.

"Albert's favourite book is Pride and Prejudice while his partner Raya likes German fiction, like the Winnetou native American stories by Karl May," keeper Michael Krause said.

"But they both like cookery books and when we're doing dramatic readings they like me to act out all the movements," he said.

The bedtime stories came about because the pair had been sending Krause potty with their non-stop playing at night at Poland's Gdansk Zoo .

"If you gave them a fruit snack they'd throw it around, if you tried to wear them out with play, they'd just get hyper," he said.

"I didn't know what to do until I pulled out a book I was reading during a break and within a couple of minutes they were trying to read over my shoulder.

"Now they go to bed quietly and peacefully as long as they get their stories," he said.