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Orangutan

Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They were originally considered one species but are now classified as three separate species - Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan, and the newly identified Tapanuli orangutan. All three species are critically endangered due to habitat loss and poaching. Conservation efforts aim to protect wild orangutan populations and their forest habitats.

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67 views

Orangutan

Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They were originally considered one species but are now classified as three separate species - Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan, and the newly identified Tapanuli orangutan. All three species are critically endangered due to habitat loss and poaching. Conservation efforts aim to protect wild orangutan populations and their forest habitats.

Uploaded by

Ivanciuc Adrian
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Orangutans 

are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found


only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast
Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be
one species. From 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus,
with three subspecies) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). A third species, the Tapanuli
orangutan (P. tapanuliensis), was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only
surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids
(gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans) between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago.
The most arboreal of the great apes, orangutans spend most of their time in trees. They have
proportionally long arms and short legs, and have reddish-brown hair covering their bodies. Adult
males weigh about 75 kg (165 lb), while females reach about 37 kg (82 lb). Dominant adult males
develop distinctive cheek pads or flanges and make long calls that attract females and intimidate
rivals; younger subordinate males do not and more resemble adult females. Orangutans are the
most solitary of the great apes: social bonds occur primarily between mothers and their dependent
offspring. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; but they will also eat
vegetation, bark, honey, insects and bird eggs. They can live over 30 years, both in the wild and in
captivity.
Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. They use a variety of sophisticated tools and
construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes' learning abilities
have been studied extensively. There may be distinctive cultures within populations. Orangutans
have been featured in literature and art since at least the 18th century, particularly in works that
comment on human society. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė
Galdikas and they have been kept in captive facilities around the world since at least the early 19th
century.
All three orangutan species are considered critically endangered. Human activities have caused
severe declines in populations and ranges. Threats to wild orangutan populations
include poaching (for bushmeat and retaliation for consuming crops), habitat
destruction and deforestation (for palm oil cultivation and logging), and the illegal pet trade.
Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in
the wild.

Contents

 1Etymology
 2Taxonomy and phylogeny
o 2.1Fossil record
 3Characteristics
 4Ecology and behaviour
o 4.1Diet and feeding
o 4.2Social life
o 4.3Communication
o 4.4Reproduction and development
o 4.5Nesting
 5Intelligence and cognition
o 5.1Tool use and culture
o 5.2Personhood
 6Orangutans and humans
o 6.1In fiction
o 6.2In captivity
 7Conservation
o 7.1Status and threats
o 7.2Conservation centres and organisations
 8See also
 9References
 10External links

Etymology
The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang[1]) is
derived from the Malay words orang, meaning "person", and hutan, meaning "forest".[2][3] The locals
originally used the name to refer to actual forest-dwelling human beings, but the word underwent a
semantic extension to include apes of the Pongo genus at an early stage in the history of Malay.[2][4]
The word orangutan appears in its older form urangutan, in a variety of premodern sources in
the Old Javanese language. The earliest of these is the Kakawin Ramayana, a ninth-century or early
tenth-century Javanese adaption of the Sanskrit Ramayana. In these Old Javanese sources, the
word urangutan refers only to apes and not to forest-dwelling human beings. The word was not
originally Javanese, but was borrowed from an early Malayic language at least a thousand years
ago. Hence the ultimate origin of the term "orangutan" as denoting the Pongo ape was most
likely Old Malay.[2]

Sketch of "The Man of the Woods" by George Edwards, 1758

The first printed attestation of the word for the apes is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius’
1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis. He reported that Malays had informed him the
ape could talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour".[5] The word appeared in several
German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. It has been argued that
the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay,[4] but the age of the Old Javanese
sources mentioned above make Old Malay a more likely origin for the term. Cribb and colleagues
(2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (as this description was from Java where
the apes were not known from) but to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most
likely cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first
to use the term in a publication a decade later.[6]: 10–18 
The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants ending with -
ng are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English
up to the present but has come to be regarded as incorrect.[7][8][9] The loss of "h" in utan and the shift
from -ng to -n has been taken to suggest the term entered English through Portuguese.[4] In Malay,
the term was first attested in 1840, not as an indigenous name but referring to how the English
called the animal.[10] The word 'orangutan' in Malay and Indonesian today was borrowed from English
or Dutch in the 20th century—explaining why the initial 'h' of 'hutan' is also missing.[4]
The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battel, an English
sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named
Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the
terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. French naturalist Bernard Germain de
Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus in 1799.[11][6]: 24–25  Battel's "Pongo", in turn, is from
the Kongo word mpongi[12][13] or other cognates from the region: Lumbu pungu, Vili mpungu,
or Yombi yimpungu.[14]

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