News - Orangutan Behaviour

Orangutans supplement diet with loris

18 January 2012
When fruit is scarce, try chomping on a slow loris. That seems to be the strategy adopted by the normally vegetarian orang-utans, which have been spotted knocking the small primates out of trees and killing them with a bite to the head.

Teaching orangutans to be wild

18 December 2010
Michelle Desilets, Executive Director of the Orangutan Land Trust, spoke with Laurel Neme on her "The WildLife" radio show and podcast about the process of rehabilitating orphaned orangutans and teaching them to be wild. This is the second in a two-part interview.

Human laughter echoes chimp chuckles

6 June 2009
Humans aren't the only ones who like it in the armpit. Our fellow great apes - orangutans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas - also squeal in response to tickling, and new research shows this behavior may be the evolutionary root of human laughter.

Orangutans swim to safety

19 March 2009
Desperate times calls for desperate measures. Wild orang-utans spend 90 per cent of their time on treetops, and very rarely descend to the ground, unless disaster strikes, according to a press release.