The original large primates of the primary forests of South-east Asia are veritable dancers of the tree-tops. With an incomparable elegance, they swing from branch to branch by means of their long, muscly arms. This way of moving common to gibbons is called, among others, movement by “brachiation”.
Orangutans have a culture, codes and habits that need to be learnt and passed from generation and generation. Learning how to read the jungle, its trees, fruits, branches that they come across, those where to make a nest or indeed their dangers, takes up a lot of time. The young stay with their mother until the latter loses interest when raising another young one. This separation could take place between 6 and 9 years old.
The orangutan is an animal whose wild populations are as fragile as ever. The intensive farming of olive oil has destroyed the forest upon which they depend to live. Torn from their environment, they die of hunger or poaching. The fragmentation of the forests by roads stops the trees from touching each other and bars the path of such animals, for whom the dense canopy is the only safe way to move around.
