Borneo: Wild Orangutans

July 25, 2010

We've seen orangutans in zoos before, or so we thought. Each guidebook warned us that the orangutans often don't emerge out of the jungle for the feedings because these wild orangutans are free to come and go at Semenggoh.

Were we ever surprised to find an orangutan, before we even left the parking lot! It was a momma orangutan, feeding a banana to her baby up in the tree. Delima, she's called, was fiercely protective, it turns out. After we stood less than 10 feet from her and her baby, the keeper later told us that she had once bit him so hard that he needed 24 stitches. She tends to bite when she thinks she needs to protect her baby. The kids heard that story and repeated it amongst themselves for the next half hour.

Then a young girl orangutan swung along the ropes course, watching us watch her with a potato in hand, sometimes stopping to throw vines on the tin roof to make some loud noise and shake up the humans under the roof. Her favorite trick was swinging so she was in a tree above a human, then aim her pee down towards the human.

We went deeper into the jungle where the male orangutans were, 6 of them, including Ritchie the big Daddy of them all! They seemed to be all around us. Before we knew it, one had swung right above Ken then landed near me and Boom for his feeding from a keeper. Boom and I were right behind the keeper as he'd hand coconuts to the orangutan. The orangutan would then swing over to a palm tree and loudly crack the coconut against the tree.

Then, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before, we were surrounded by sounds of cracking coconuts, a regular symphony performed by the orangutans. As I watched, Boom started whining. The keeper turned around and did the only thing he could think of doing, he handed Boom a banana. At first Boom felt too sheepish to eat it. But after he started ripping into the banana, I quietly started freaking out, picturing the orangutan jealously swinging up to Boom to grab his banana back.

This is a video Griffin made with his camera of the girl orangutan: