Orang Utan's Profile

Orang Utans

The orangutans are two species of great apes. Known for their intelligence, they live in trees and are the largest living arboreal animal. They have longer arms than other great apes, and their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of other great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, they are currently found only in rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, though fossils have been found in Java, the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Vietnam and China. There are only two surviving species in the genus Pongo and the subfamily Ponginae, which includes the extinct genera Gigantopithecus and Sivapithecus.

Etymology

The name orangutan (also written orang-utan, orang utan and orangutang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan is the common term in these two national languages, although local peoples may also refer to them by local languages. Maias and mawas are also used in Malay, but it is unclear if those words refer only to orangutans, or to all apes in general.

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect.

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. It is now believed that he was describing gorillas, but in the late 18th century it was believed that all great apes were orangutans; hence Lacépède's use of Pongo for the genus.

An orangutan's standing height averages from 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5m) and weighs between 73 to 180 lbs (33 to 82 kg). Males can weigh up to 250 lbs (113 kg) or more. Orangutan hands are similar to humans’ hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. The largest males have an arm span of about 7.5 ft (2.3 m).

Orangutans have a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. They are mostly covered with long reddish-brown hair, although this differs between the species: Sumatran Orangutans have a more sparse and lighter coloured coat, and a black-haired Bornean subspecies was discovered in 2009 by primatologist Birute Galdikas.

The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Adult males have large cheek flaps (which get larger as the ape ages) that show their dominance to other males and their readiness to mate to other females. The age of maturity for females is approximately 12 years. Orangutans may live for about 50 years in the wild. However, thousands of orangutans don't reach adulthood due to human disruption. Orangutans are killed for food while others are killed because of disruption in people's property. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets. Many of the infants die without the help of their mother.

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all of their time in the trees. Every night they fashion sleeping nests from branches and foliage. They are more solitary than other apes; males and females generally come together only to mate. Mothers stay with their babies for six or seven years. There is significant sexual dimorphism: females can grow to around 4 ft 2 in or 127 centimeters and weigh around 100 lbs or 45 kg, while flanged adult males can reach 5 ft 9 in or 175 centimeters in height and weight over 260 lbs or 118 kg.

The arms of orangutans are twice as long as their legs. Much of the arm's length has to do with the length of the radius and the ulna rather than the humorous. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to better grip onto branches. Orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans and other primates, due to the lack of a hip joint ligament which keeps the femur held into the pelvis. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

Diet
Fruit makes up 65–90 percent of the orangutan diet. Fruits with sugary or fatty pulp are favored. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten, because they are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland Dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit; the same forests provide excellent timber for the logging industry and good soil conditions for palm oil plantations. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include: young leaves, shoots, seeds, bark, insects, honey, and bird eggs.

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Bark is consumed as a last resort in times of food scarcity; fruits are always preferred.

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behavior; for the addition of minerals nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhea.

Orangutans use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.
Behaviour and language

Like the other great apes, orangutans are remarkably intelligent. Although tool use among chimpanzees was documented by Jane Goodall in the 1960s, it was not until the mid-1990s that one population of orangutans was found to use feeding tools regularly. A 2003 paper in the journal Science described the evidence for distinct orangutan cultures.

According to research psychologist Robert Deaner and his colleagues, orangutans are the world's most intelligent animal other than humans, with higher learning and problem solving ability than chimpanzees, which were previously considered to have greater abilities. A study of orangutans by Carel van Schaik, a Dutch primatologist at Duke University, found them capable of tasks well beyond chimpanzees’ abilities — such as using leaves to make rain hats and leakproof roofs over their sleeping nests. He also found that, in some food-rich areas, the creatures had developed a complex culture in which adults would teach youngsters how to make tools and find food

A two year study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973-1975 by Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of David Premack who used plastic tokens to teach the chimpanzee, Sarah, linguistic skills. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980. During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of R. Allen and Beatrix Gardner who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late-1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female who learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan who learned nearly 30 signs over a two year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

The first orangutan language study program, directed by Dr. Francine Neago, was listed by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1988. The Orangutan language project at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., uses a computer system originally developed at UCLA by Neago in conjunction with IBM.

Zoo Atlanta has a touch screen computer where their two Sumatran Orangutans play games. Scientists hope that the data they collect from this will help researchers learn about socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behavior from trial and error, and hope the data can point to new conservation strategies.

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed that orangutans are the first non-human species documented to use 'calculated reciprocity' which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time.

Although orangutans are generally passive, aggression toward other orangutans is very common; they are solitary animals and can be fiercely territorial. Immature males will try to mate with any female, and may succeed in forcibly copulating with her if she is also immature and not strong enough to fend him off. Mature females easily fend off their immature suitors, preferring to mate with a mature male.

Orangutans do not swim. At least one population at a conservation refuge on Kaja island in Borneo have been photographed wading in deep water.

Orangutans have even shown laughter-like vocalizations in response to physical contact, such as wrestling, play chasing, or tickling.

Species

Ø Genus Pongo

Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)
§ Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus - northwest populations
§ Pongo pygmaeus morio - east populations
§ Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii - southwest populations

Ø Sumatran Orangutan (P. abelii)

The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until recently, when they were elevated to full specific level, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran Orangutan than the Bornean Orangutan. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808). Regardless, the type locality of pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as wurmbii (in which case wurmbii would be a junior synonym of pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name morio, as well as various junior synonyms that have been suggested, have been considered likely to all be junior synonyms of the population listed as pygmaeus in the above, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

In addition, a fossil species, P. hooijeri, is known from Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or P. abeli or, in fact, represent distinct species.
Conservation status

The Sumatran species is critically endangered and the Bornean species of orangutans is endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES. The total number of Bornean orangutans is estimated to be less than 14 percent of what it was in the recent past (from around 10,000 years ago until the middle of the twentieth century) and this sharp decline has occurred mostly over the past few decades due to human activities and development. Species distribution is now highly patchy throughout Borneo: it is apparently absent or uncommon in the south-east of the island, as well as in the forests between the Rejang River in central Sarawak and the Padas River in western Sabah (including the Sultanate of Brunei). The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk. A similar development has been observed for the Sumatran orangutans.

The most recent estimate for the Sumatran Orangutan is around 7,300 individuals in the wild while the Bornean Orangutan population is estimated at between 45,000 and 69,000. These estimates were obtained between 2000 and 2003. Since recent trends are steeply down in most places due to logging and burning, it is forecast that the current numbers are below these figures.

Orangutan habitat destruction due to logging, mining and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads, has been increasing rapidly in the last decade. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to oil palm plantations in response to international demand (the palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and more recently as source of biodiesel). Some UN scientists believe that these plantations could lead to the extinction of the species by the year 2012. Some of this activity is illegal, occurring in national parks that are officially off limits to loggers, miners and plantation development. There is also a major problem with hunting and illegal pet trade. In early 2004 about 100 individuals of Bornean origin were confiscated in Thailand and 50 of them were returned to Kalimantan in 2006. Several hundred Bornean orangutan orphans who were confiscated by local authorities have been entrusted to different orphanages in both Malaysia and Indonesia. They are in the process of being rehabilitated into the wild.

Major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah.

The Orang Utans

Facts about Orangutans

Orangutans are highly intelligent with an ability to reason and think. This large, gentle red ape is one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of our DNA. Indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia call this ape "Orang Hutan" literally translating into English as "People of the Forest".

The Orangutan is a remarkable creature as it is the world's largest arboreal primate. Now faced with the possibility of extinction in the wild in the foreseeable future the following pages provide some interesting facts about the habits of orangutans and their chances of survival

What is so special about an orangutan?
Their eyes hold a story that is indecipherable and yet intuitively we relate to them. Just one look into those eyes and you are hooked.

Orangutans are highly intelligent with an ability to reason and think. This large, gentle red ape is one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of our DNA. Indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia call this ape "Orang Hutan" literally translating into English as "People of the Forest". In times past, they would not kill them because they felt the orangutan was simply a person hiding in the trees, trying to avoid having to go to work or become a slave.

Orangutans are unique in the ape world. There are four kinds of great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. Only the orangutan comes from Asia; the others all come from Africa. There are two separate species of orangutan - the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) and the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

The orangutan is the only strictly arboreal ape and is actually the largest tree- living mammal in the world. Although the rest of the apes do climb and build sleeping nests in the trees, they are primarily terrestrial (spending their lives on the ground). Even the hair color of the orangutan, a bright reddish brown, is unique in the ape world.

The orangutan has the most remarkable ability to travel through the forest treetops. Each night they will build nests out of leaves and branches in the very tops of the trees.

The upper tree canopy is where the orangutan will live and sleep - sometimes as much as 100 feet above the ground. The orangutan has little need to come down from this height as they are uniquely adapted for their arboreal lifestyle.

Almost all of the food they eat grows in the treetops and the frequent rains fill the leaves, supplying them with drinking water. When water is difficult to find, they chew leaves to make a sponge to soak up the droplets in tree cavities. However when it rains very hard, the orangutan makes an umbrella for himself out of big leaves.

Many people are familiar with the studies that have shown chimpanzees using tools, such as termite-fishing sticks. Recent studies show that some populations of orangutans also fashion tools to aid in the difficult task of foraging for food.

Some might say orangutans have four hands instead of two hands and two feet. These appendages make them graceful and agile while climbing through the trees but makes walking on the ground somewhat slow and awkward. This is why an orangutan is at a great disadvantage on the ground, and an orangutan rarely comes down from the treetops. Their food is there, their home is there and they are safer there.

An orangutan's lifespan is about 35-40 years in the wild, and sometimes into the 50's in captivity. They reach puberty at about 8 years of age.

The orangutan has the longest childhood dependence on a mother of any animal in the world, because there is so much for a young orangutan to learn in order to survive. The babies nurse until they are about six years of age. The young males may stay close by their mothers for a few more years but the females stay until they are into their teens, allowing them to observe mothering skills as they watch their younger sibling being raised. Orangutan females only give birth about once every 8 years - the longest time between births of any mammal on earth. (This results in only 4 to 5 babies in her lifetime.) This is why orangutan populations are very slow to recover from any disturbances.

Food is often scarce in the rain forest and provides the main reason why the orangutan is a semi-solitary creature. However, in times of great abundance of food, orangutans may use the opportunity to socialize and gather in small groups.

Their diet is made up of bark, leaves, flowers, a variety of insects, and most importantly, over 300 kinds of fruit. The mothers must teach the babies what food to eat, where to find that food, in which trees and during which seasons. It is thought that orangutans must have a very complex map of the forest in their mind, and detailed knowledge of the fruiting cycles of many species of trees. (This prevents wasting valuable energy searching for fruit trees randomly, and traveling to a certain fruiting tree whose fruits will not ripen for some time). The babies must eventually know hundreds of species of plants and trees, which ones are edible, and how to process them as some are very difficult to eat because they are protected by sharp spines and shells.

Compared with other apes, orangutans are fairly unsociable creatures. The only real bond which is formed is between mother and offspring. The young stay with their mother until adolescence at about the age of seven, but after that they generally only see each other from time to time. The males move away in search of their own territories. Males travel long distances, paying little attention to other orangutans that they meet.

When the males become sexually mature they develop many distinctive physical features that are very characteristic of orangutans. Fleshy cheek pads form on both sides of their face and a high, fatty crown on their head. Their hair grows long and a beard develops on their faces. They have an impressive call that they produce with the aid of their laryngeal sac (found under their chin). This is called the "Long Call" and is used to locate and advertise their presence to females or warn other males away.

Males often weigh over 200 pounds, where females are 1/3 to 1/2 his size.

The orangutan is regarded as an "umbrella" species. Its arboreal tree-swinging journeys help to spread tree seeds - in fact some trees can only germinate when they have passed through its gut. The orangutan is pivotal in creating the necessary environment for the thousands of fauna and flora which make up the biodiversity of the south east asian rain forest.

Orangutans are one of the least understood of all apes, and are continually under threat from the actions of man. This is primarily from the illegal capture and trade of orangutan young, but also due to the ever-depleting habitat caused by through the extensive logging of their forest homes.