Orangutan Orphans Taught How to Survive
Young Orphaned Orangutans Given Life Skills and New Homes
Jul 14, 2009
Orangutans share many similar characteristics with humans including long ‘childhoods’. Wild orangutans stay close to their mother until they are eight or nine years old and learn their jungle survival skills from her.
Unfortunately, increasing logging and deforestation of the jungle in Indonesia results in many baby or young orangutans being orphaned as their mothers are either accidentally or deliberately killed as they approach villages looking for food. Much of the logging is illegal, from farmers needing more land to grow crops. However, the greatest threat to orangutan habitat is from palm oil plantations.
Palm oil is a highly lucrative crop; it is exported to many countries, where it is used to manufacture biscuits, potato chips and other processed foods, as well as soap products. The fast food industry uses palm oil for deep frying.
Rehabilitation Centres for Orphaned Orangutans
Indonesia has a number of rehabilitation centres for orphaned orangutans. An Australian organisation, the Australian Orangutan Project, (AOP), provides financial assistance to these centres through an infant sponsorship scheme.
AOP Researcher Kris Descovitch spent five months in Indonesia studying the care and behaviour of orangutans during the rehabilitation process. Such is the fierce attachment of the mother orangutan to her child that it is inevitable the young animals will be orphaned, she says, as “there is no way the mother would let you take the juvenile without killing her.”
Most of the orphans are between two and seven years old, with some arriving as young as two months old. They stay until they reach independent age when they are released back into the jungle.
Teaching Young Orangutans Essential Life Skills
In the wild, young orangutans would spend most of their time with their mothers. Ms Descovich says rehabilitation centres are having to take on a surrogate mother role by showing the animals what to eat or where to find nesting materials.
For several hours each day, the young animals are taken to a semi-wild forest area where they can forage for plants to eat, climb the trees, and gather nesting material, watched over by the rehab staff.
They are given a midday feed of fruit, rice or milk, but can also forage for other fruits and plants. As a grazing animal, orangutans normally spend a lot of time each day foraging and eating.
The infants are socially grouped, allowing orphans who had stayed with their mothers for longer before they were separated to demonstrate their better survival skills and pass them on to less confident ones.
Rescued Orangutans Treated for Trauma and Malnutrition
When the animals first arrive at the rehabilitation centre, they are quarantined and often need treatment for malnutrition and trauma. Injuries can include missing limbs, machete and chainsaw cuts, burns from being doused in petrol and set alight, and sometimes bite wounds from other orangutans.
They may also be tested and treated for diseases such as tuberculosis, ringworm or intestinal worms as well as undergoing regular weighing and measuring.
“We need to ensure that each orangutan is provided with the correct education and possesses the physical attributes required to be reintroduced to the wild if we are to see this species survive the effects of deforestation,” Ms Descovitch says.
Shrinking Forest Makes New Orangutan Homes Hard to Select
Identifying suitable release sites for the orangutans “is increasingly difficult with the current rate of native habitat destruction, “ she says. She points out that the shrinking jungle is a human rights issue as well as an animal welfare one, as people living a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle are also displaced by palm oil plantations.
“This is an issue that will require a great deal more study if the ‘man of the forest’ is to survive,” she says.
You might also like to read Creating New Homes for Orangutans in Borneo
and Saving Biodiversity in Sarawak.
 |
 |
