Orangutans have the most intense relationship between mother and young of any non-human mammal. A baby orangutan will be carried around by its mother, and that will continue for the first five years. Some mothers even suckle their offspring for six or seven years. For the first eight years of a young orangutans life, its mother is its constant companion.
Until another baby orangutan is born, mothers sleep in a nest with their offspring every night. Clyde was played by a trained orangutan named Manis, but was replaced for the sequel as he grew too quickly.
Ex-captive individuals associated with rehabilitation programmes tend to be more gregarious than wild orangutans. If wild populations lived in fertile lowland areas with abundant concentrations of food, they might have been more gregarious. Since humans have destroyed such forests to use the land for agriculture, sociable orangutans, if they ever existed, are long gone.
Orangutans can appear disconcertingly human. But biologists in Borneo have noticed that some of the apes place a cupped hand in front of the mouth when making the sound. In humans, such a gesture is usually employed to keep whispered conversations private. But it seems that, for orangutans, it serves a very different purpose.
The cupped hand makes the kiss-squeak call resonate, so the animal sounds bigger than it actually is. Source: Journal of Experimental Biology.
Orangutans have the longest birth interval of any mammal. In Borneo, they give birth on average once every eight years. In Sumatra, some females may only give birth once every 10 years.
Females often do not breed until the age of If adult females are killed, the population takes a long time to recover. Discovered in captivity in Indonesia after being taken from the wild, she was rescued by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation BOS , who named her Alba and took care of her. Orangutans are the only great apes of Asia, but not the only apes. It appears that they are of African origin but dispersed about 15 million years ago.
During the Miocene period, there were many ape species throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. Chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas survived in Africa, but only the orangutans survived in Asia. But he should never have been there in the first place — the Jungle Book was set in the forests of central India, thousands of miles from the nearest wild orangutan.
Still, it did make a pretty good story. The massive destruction of the orangutans habitat — the tropical rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra — is catastrophic. We are working to save the species and its habitat, but the forces arrayed against the orangutan are so formidable that perhaps, if we and they are lucky, just one or two populations may survive.
A study found that Sumatran orangutan numbers have been underestimated, but warns of decreases. Scientists have found that the number of orangutans living on Sumatra is more than double the previous estimate — but insist that their findings are not good news. Orangutans are gentle and sit for hours gazing.
They are also very smart: they perform as well as chimpanzees and gorillas in tests of cognitive ability. In captivity, they are excellent tool-users and versatile tool-makers. The long time taken to reach sexual maturity, the long interbirth periods, and the fact that orang-utans normally give birth to just a single young mean that orang-utans have an extremely low reproductive rate. This makes orang-utan populations highly vulnerable to excessive mortality, and means that populations take a long time to recover from population declines.
The rest comprises young leaves and shoots, insects, soil, tree bark, woody lianas, and occasionally eggs and small vertebrates. They obtain water not only from fruit, but also from tree holes. Three species There are three species of orang-utan - the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli - which differ a little in appearance and behavior.
The Bornean and Sumatran species have shaggy reddish fur, Sumatran orangutans have longer facial hair. Sumatran orang-utans are also reported to have closer social bonds than their Bornean cousins.
The Sumatran orang-utan is almost exclusively arboreal. Females virtually never travel on the ground and adult males do so only rarely. This is in contrast to Bornean orang-utans, especially adult males, which more often descend to the ground.
A third species of orangutan was announced in November, With no more than individuals in existence, the Tapanuli orangutan is the most endangered of all great apes. This new third species lives in North Sumatra, but is genetically and behaviorally distinct from the two other species. An international team of scientists described the new species in Current Biology.
The Tapanuli orangutan Pongo tapanuliensis is distinguished from other orangutan populations based on morphological and genomic evidence. The new species is endemic to square miles of upland forest in the Batang Toru Ecosystem of Sumatra and is believed to have been isolated from other orangutan populations for 10,, years.
Flanged male Bornean orangutan Pongo pygmaeus. Tree emerging from tropical rainforest. Key facts. Did you know? Meaning of name Orang-utan means 'man of the forest' in Malay language. Species news.
But today Asia's great ape is confined to just two islands, Borneo and Sumatra. As the orang-utan's range has decreased so have its numbers. A century ago, there were probably , orang-utans - around four times as many as there are today. Their dense forest home makes it difficult to determine population sizes, but the Bornean orang-utan is estimated to number around , individuals, while there are under 14, Sumatran orang-utans.
The Sumatran orang-utan is now restricted to the north of Sumatra. It depends on high-quality primary forests, and is less able to tolerate habitat disturbance than Bornean orang-utans. The population is currently fragmented into 13 populations in 21 forest blocks. Only 6 of these populations boast more than animals and are therefore regarded as viable in the long term, but even these groups are under threat due to ongoing habitat loss.
The Bornean orang-utan was once distributed throughout large areas of Kalimantan Indonesia and Sarawak and Sabah Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Most Bornean orang-utans are now found in Kalimantan, especially along the east coast. The majority of wild populations are located outside of protected areas, in forests that are exploited for timber production or are in the process of being converted to agriculture.
Three subspecies live in different parts of the island: Northwest Bornean orang-utan is the most threatened subspecies with over 3, remaining. Northeast Bornean orang-utans are the smallest in size. Around 16, live in Sabah and parts of eastern Kalimantan.
Central Bornean orang-utans are the most common subspecies with around 35, surviving. What are the main threats? Habitat loss is by far the greatest threat to orang-utans. Huge tracts of forest have been cleared throughout their range and the land used for agriculture, particularly palm oil - a product that is found in more than half of packaged products in supermarkets around the world.
When a male orangutan is nearly fully grown around the age of , it develops the characteristic flappy cheek-pads known as flanges protruding from the face.
The larger the flanges, the more dominant the male. Orangutan males can travel over long distances and they live isolated from other males. Orangutans have a long infancy. They cling to their mothers and are transported on her back for the first years of their lives. The orangutan is nursed by its mother until the age of eight, which is the longest nursing time in all mammals. The females live alone or in small groups of closely related individuals, and they often remain in the same forest area in which they were born.
Toggle navigation. Species and distribution Orangutans live exclusively in Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia, and it is the only great ape found outside of Africa. The habitats of the orangutan The remaining wild populations of orangutans live in the rainforest, usually in low-lying peat forests and other fertile rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra.
Population The largest remaining species of orangutans is the Bornean species Pongo pygmaeus. Reproduction Orangutans have the longest birth interval of any land mammal in the world.
Age and DNA A wild orangutan can live for up to 45 years, and an orangutan in captivity can live for up to 60 years. Males When a male orangutan is nearly fully grown around the age of , it develops the characteristic flappy cheek-pads known as flanges protruding from the face.
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