The orangutan

The orangutan has been studied in its natural environment since 1712 when the Englishman Captain Daniel Beekman visited South Borneo. In 1776, the first orangutans reached Europe. They had been brought to Amsterdam for the natural science collection of Prince William V, and soon more followed. Studying the orangutan in its natural environment has not been easy however, because the "red ape" is the most solitary and elusive of the primates.

As late as the early 1960s, Tom Harisson, curator of the Sarawak Museum, first pointed out the sorry predicament of the orangutans (they were being shot and sold as museum specimens). Even by this time, next to nothing was known about their private lives. In terms of primary research, it is only since the great field studies initiated in Borneo and Sumatra by such inspired scientists as John McKinnon, Peter Rodman, David Horr, and Herman Rijksen that we have learned a good deal more about the environmental conditions and behavior of the orangutan, or "forest man."

McKinnon's research was based on the premise that if he were to learn about the orangutan, he must live as an orangutan himself. McKinnon's procedure was to search the forest until he met an orangutan. Then he stayed with this animal wherever it went, even sleeping in the wild when the ape slept, and following it the next day. Using this approach, he began to make some sense of the daily campaigns of the animals. McKinnon verified that, unlike the other great anthrop

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nd in its mouth. Holding on to a tree trunk with its arms and legs, the orangutan rams the stick into a hole containing a termite nest. It then flicks out the broken-up chunks--full of delectable larvae and pupae--and eats them. The Suaq orangutans also use sticks to scare out ants from tree colonies. But, [as Van Shraik reports], "the most common use is when [the orangutans] go for honey. They put a stick in and poke through some nest wall and move it around and catch the honey, pull it out, turn it around and stick the other end in their mouth, and then go back in." If the stick is too long to use comfortably, they snap off one end." (Zimmer, 1995, p. 47) In a similar vein, Herman Rijksen tells how a young orangutan floated rom one tree to another on a liana. As Grzimek's (1990) encyclopedia reports, "Arriving at its goal, it carefully tied the liana up, instead of letting it swing back, thereby frustrating the efforts of another animal to follow it" (p. 409). Not only does this behavior indicate intention, but it indicates a selfishness which is only too human in nature. Birute M.F. Galdikas is another important orangutan researcher whose first-hand observations (with her husband Rod), have shown us that orangutan

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