Species Hang in the Balance

BINOMIAL NAME:

Pongo Abelii

ANATOMICAL PROPORTIONS:

2.5-3.5 ft. tall/ 88-200 lbs.

POPULATION (APPROXIMATE):

6,500

CONSERVATION STATUS:

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED

DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT:

Lowland tropical rainforests, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra

DIET:

Mostly fruit (approximately 60% of their diet), but also leaves, insects (i.e. ants and termites), and cambium (the underside of tree bark); Sumatran subspecies also (very rarely) catch and eat slow loris (a small, nocturnal primate)

SPECIES THREATS:

Deforestation---the clear-cutting of Sumatran rainforests a) to convert the land into oil palm plantations, and b) for logging---continues on a massive scale; exacerbating the situation for Sumatran orangutans, is that not even their protected habitat remains free from such exploitation.

Building new roadways through Sumatran rainforests also necessitates clear-cutting, and further fragments the already fragile and dispersed orangutan population living on the island.

The illegal pet trade is especially horrific and problematic for Sumatran orangutans, as a species. Despite that the animal has technically been protected since 1931, black market poaching nevertheless occurs, and the process has massive consequences for wild numbers. Scientists estimate that for each infant orangutan to survive its capture and life as pet, the species in turn loses three infants and at least one adult (the mother). Why? Most infants do not make it through the traumatic incarceration---the mother is no-doubt killed during the process, often while up in a tree (with her baby still attached), whereupon the infant either dies from the fall, or else dies during the ensuing beating (which poachers inflict upon the mother, if she survives the several-stories plummet to earth).

UNIQUE FACTS:

Orangutans are the only great apes that do not inhabit the continent of Africa.

Orangutans have the longest interval between births, of all mammal species (up to eight years); also, on average, females do not become sexually reproductive until age 15.

If left alone, orangutans can live for many decades in the wild, for up to 50 years.

Orangutan means "person of the forest", and they are indeed one of our closest living relatives (a 96%-97% DNA match). As its nickname implies, these creatures are highly intelligent, emotional, and culturally sophisticated---adept students, teachers, and tool-users, orangutans rival chimpanzees as the second-most intelligent primate on earth (after humans).

DEVOTED ORGANIZATION:

Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS)

• Donate to the SOS
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