No-one’s Ark: Tapanuli Orangutan
IUCN Status: Critically Endangered
This is an extract from Human Nature: How to be a Better Animal, part of Chapter 6’s list of ten animals that I would choose to save first.
I’ve always wanted to live in a treehouse. The ability to look down at nature with a bird’s eye view seems so magical to me that it has never lost its appeal. Orangutans not only fulfill this fantasy of mine, but they do so in spectacular fashion. Say I was to drop you in the rainforest canopy of Indonesia to spend the night. My guess is, you’d get precious little sleep and possibly even break your neck with a 30m fall to the forest floor. Orangutans, on the other hand, have evolved to spend most of their life in this complex 3D landscape, building beds for themselves in the trees every night as they settle down to rest. In a little over the time it takes you to brush your teeth, they construct their nightly nest, often replete with pillows, blankets, a roof and/ bunk-bed.
Whilst chimpanzees and gorillas are easy to study, orangutans remain just slightly out of reach, high up in the treetops on remote leech-infested islands. Birutė Galdikas was the one who sought to change that. Alongside Jane Goodall studying chimps and Dian Fossey with her gorillas, Birutė was the third of the ‘trimates’- female researchers who revolutionized our understanding of our closest relatives. She first entered the Bornean rainforest in 1971 and has since continued to work with the great red apes for a full fifty years. Through rehabilitation and wild observation of orangutans, Birutė has made the single largest contribution to our knowledge of the species, leading one of the longest continuous studies of any species.
In late 2013, an injured male orangutan named Raya was brought to the researchers. Bearing cut wounds and marks from air rifle pellets, Raya was in a very bad state, having clearly been harassed by local villagers. Despite intensive veterinary care, Raya died just eight days later. Several years passed and new evidence came to light in the form of genetic studies. What was previously thought to be a single orangutan species isolated on the island of Sumatra was in fact two separate species inhabiting the North and South parts of the island respectively. Raya’s skeleton was re-examined and became the first-ever Tapanuli orangutan described.
With the addition of this third orangutan species, the rarest great ape on the planet was born. The Tapanuli orangutan may number as few as 800 individuals, though counting them in the dense jungle is a challenge. An unusual partnership has seen astrophysicists and ecologists unite, with thermal imaging drones running technology intended for recording stars now used to map the heat signatures of orangutans in the treetops. The habitat available to all orangutans is severely fragmented from palm oil plantations and community settlements, so knowing whereabouts they are is more critical than ever. These are the smartest non-human apes, the loss of which would be sorely felt.
That’s where zoos come in. Orangutans aren’t especially common in zoos across the globe, but those few in captivity are important as safeguards should their wild cousins disappear. There are always questions raised about keeping highly intelligent animals in zoos, but I personally come down strongly in favour of the practice. It only takes a quick look at the zoo facilities in question to see why. In Milwaukee Zoo, the orangutans have each been given an iPad loaded with games, David Attenborough documentaries, and Skye so they can call orangutans in other zoos. In the Netherlands, one zoo found their orangutans had lost some agility at swinging through trees, and so brought in an Olympic gymnast to teach them the ropes. Though the apes weren’t all that impressed by his antics on their newly renovated climbing frame, it gave the public quite a spectacle to behold. If I were an orangutan, I’d much rather be in a nicely kept zoo exhibit than in the wild.
Orangutan is a word meaning “man of the forest,” and their behaviour leaves me with no doubt as to their strong human resemblance. Researchers working with them in the wild have testified to seeing them mimicking all manner of actions. Sawing wood, applying insect repellent, using soap and washing clothes, using hammers and stealing boats all count on a long list of orangutan escapades. They use a paste made from pulping up a particular plant species to soothe muscle aches, and it is thought that local tribes learnt from watching orangutans how to make use of this natural remedy.
The Tapanuli orangutan joins my ark in recognition of the fact that we’re far more alike to most animals than we tend to give them credit for. And that there are some skills we cannot hope to match other animals at- like building treehouses.
