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Description:
Description:
Orangutans spend most of their lives in trees. They get their food from the trees and they build nests in the branches to sleep in. Their long arms help them swing from tree to tree. They use their hands and feet to grab and hold tree branches and food. Orangutans are very smart. They sit under leafy branches for protection from rain and sun, and sometimes even put a very large leaf on their head like a rainhat!
Orangutans don’t live in big family groups like other great apes. An adult female will live with her children, but that is the largest grouping. Adult males usually live alone. Orangutans have a very loud call they use to find one another during the mating season.
Habitat:
Habitat:
Orangutans are found only in the rain forests of the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. They spend nearly their entire lives in trees—swinging in tree tops and building nests for sleep.
An estimated 19,000 to 25,000 orangutans live in the wild. Another 900 live in captivity.
Diet:
Diet:
Orangutans feed mainly on fruits, especially wild figs. They also eat other kinds of vegetation, insects, small vertebrates and birds eggs.
Causes of Endangerment:
Causes of Endangerment:
The habitats of Asia's only great apes are fast disappearing under the chainsaw to make way for oil palm plantations and other agricultural plantations. Illegal logging inside protected areas and unsustainable logging in concessions where orangutans live remains a major threat to their survival. Today, more than 50% of orangutans are found outside protected areas in forests under management by timber, palm oil and mining companies.
Orangutans are an easy target for hunters because they're large and slow targets. They are killed for food or in retaliation when they move into agricultural areas and destroy crops. This usually occurs when orangutans can't find the food they need in the forest.
Why it Matters:
Why it Matters:
Orangutans are "gardeners" of the forest, playing a vital role in seed dispersal in their habitats. They live in tropical forests and prefer forest in river valleys and floodplains of their respective islands. Orangutans' extremely low reproductive rate makes their populations highly vulnerable. Females give birth to one infant at a time about every 3-5 years, so these species can take a long time to recover from population declines. With human pressure only increasing, orangutans face an increasing risk of extinction.
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