- There are 3 species of orangutan: Bornean Orangutan (Pongo Pygmaeus), Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo Abelii), Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis)
- Orangutan males can be up to 300 pounds in size
- As much as 97% population loss since 1903
Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)
- An orangutan in prime living conditions can live for up to 60 years
- When on the ground, orangutans walk on all fours, using their palms or fists. Unlike the African apes, orangutans are not built morphologically Morphology is the branch of biology concerned with the form and structure of organisms to be knuckle-walkers.
- From the age of thirteen years (usually in captivity) past the age of thirty, males may develop flangesFlanges are also known as cheekpads and large size.
- Bornean and Sumatran orangutans can breed together in captivity, producing viable offspring. So many Bornean/Sumatran crosses were once present in American zoos (before such breeding was banned) that there were more crosses in captivity than “pure” Bornean orangutans.
- Orangutans have been observed eating over 300 types of fruit.
- When males are fighting, they charge each other, grapple, and bite each other’s heads and cheekpads. They sometimes look like Sumo wrestlers.
- Although in the wild, females usually give birth to their first offspring when they are 15-16 years of age, in captivity females as young as eight years old have given birth. Likewise male orangutans in captivity as young as eight years old have fathered offspring.
- Like humans, orangutans have opposable thumbs. Their big toes are also opposable. Unlike humans, approximately one third of all orangutans do not have nails on their big toes.
- Orangutans’ arms stretch out longer than their bodies – up to 8 ft. from fingertip to fingertip in the case of very large males.
- In Malay orang means “person” and utan is derived from hutan, which means “forest.” Thus, orangutan literally means “person of the forest.”
- Orangutans have tremendous strength, which enables them to brachiate and hang upside-down from branches for long periods of time to retrieve fruit and eat young leaves.
- For the first few years of his/her life, a young orangutan holds tight to his/her mother’s body as she moves through the forest canopy.
