Orangutans

The Wild Man of Borneo...

Playful, intelligent, and sociable, orang utan is one of the most loved and most threatened of all the large apes. Found only in their natural wild habitat in South East Asia (on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra), they live mostly in the treetops where they build nests.

It seems strange that we should find such fascination in these animals - who are genetically so close to humans and share many of our characteristics - yet our activity seems certain to cause their extinction within the next few decades. Deforestation means loss of habitat for these wonderful apes, whose cause for survival has now been taken up by many conservationists and lovers of wildlife worldwide.

Orang Utan Fact Sheet

Family name: Pongidae (the great apes, including gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans)
Order name: Primates (which includes 11 families, which include lemurs, monkeys, marmosets, lesser apes, great apes, and humans)
Common name: Orangutan
Scientific name: Pongo pygmaeus

Orang-utans have a large tailless body with a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs which are used much like a second par of arms. Their name has nothing to do with the orange fur covering most of their body: 'Orang' means man and 'Utan' means of the forest. Their similarities to man are many: senses very similar to ours with four fingers and an opposable thumb on each hand. However their feet also have an opposable big toe unlike man (except perhaps in Alabama). Their arm span too is beyond man's being 2.3 m (7.5 feet).

Nowadays they are found only in Borneo and Sumatra. Although these two groupings have evolved separately, they are not separate orangutan subspecies. They may be distinct from each other but are still capable of interbreeding.

Males weigh around 90kg (200 lb) and females around 50kg (110 lb).

Orangutans are omnivorous feeding mostly on fruit, seeds, leaves and flower but also known to complement this with a few insects, birds and even small mammals. They often wash this down with some rainwater gathered in small pools in the canopy of the rainforest.

At the age of around eight years old orang utans are old enough to breed and after a nine months gestation period give birth to a single baby who will cling to their mother's breast for around the first 6 years of life.

In captivity Orangutans can expect to make it to 50 years or more but in the more testing and perilous conditions of the wild their life span ranges between 30 to 45 years - most skeletons found in the jungle display evidence of bone fractures and breakages from falls.

Orang utans are Asia's only great ape and live in the tropical rain forests in northern Sumatra, Indonesia and in the forests of Borneo, both in Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Dangers Posed by Man

In 1900, there were somewhere in the region of 315,000 orang-utans. Now, fewer than 50,000 are believed to still be living in the wild. What is worse is that many of them are divided into small, pockets of population. This means many of these groups are already not biologically viable and therefore have no chance in the long term. Predation is not really the issue for orangutans - unless you consider man blindly and rapidly destroying their habitat to be predation.

If you take a flight over Sabah for much of the time the landscape below what was one dense Borneo rainforest is now acres and acres of palm oil plantations. Local businesses have been keen to use the land for producing palm oil primarily for cooking and cosmetic use. Now, with palm oil based bio-diesel being potentially the next generation of fuel for an energy hungry world, expansion seems to be everyone's agenda with potentially catastrophic consequences for the orangutan which needs the rainforest habitat for survival. Some statistics suggest that within the next ten years the only habitat that will be remaining will be in the forests of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo - an area which will doubtless also be fully plundered for its natural resources. Indeed Indonesia has recently announced plans to create the world's third largest plantation there.

Logging is also an obvious threat with illegal logging taking place in areas where the removal of the habitat spells doom for orang-utans as well as innumerable other species of plants, insects, mammals and birds. Hunting, forest fires and the illegal pet trade also contribute to the Orangutan's unhappy lot.

Ecological Measures Being Taken

Orang utan conservation efforts are growing due to the increasingly desperate plight of the animals. At this rate we will be lucky if we end up with any orangutans at all in a couple of decades. Even then, this will probably be a small group of captive apes whose only future is to see out their days like living fossils of a once great and plentiful creature.

Educate yourself as to how much palm oil you consume - you will be amazed. Find out what contains palm oil and what action is needed to ensure the public are better informed as to what their purchases in the supermarket mean for the environment.

Act responsibly, and when purchasing wood and wooden items look out for the FSC stamp. The Forest Stewardship Council has developed an international labelling system upon which you can rely as a guarantee that the product comes from a well-managed resource.

If you'd like to contribute to conservation efforts then The Orangutan Appeal would like to hear from you. They are a UK based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) working as the only authorised NGO with the Sepilok centre.

Pay the Orang-Utans a Visit

You can contribute by visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Malaysia where you can witness orang-utans recently released back into the wild but still being fed regularly as they progress from captive patients to healthy animals living in the wild. Many Dive The World customers include this in their diving visit to the state whether to dive in Sipadan, Lankayan or Layang Layang. This centre, the biggest and first of its kind may ultimately be the orang utans' only hope for survival and your contributions (entry fee, donations, adoption programme) can help. You can stay at the delightful Sepilok Nature Resort to enjoy this encounter.

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