Orangutan Facts

Orangutan Facts

1. In Malay and Indonesian orang means “person” and utan is derived from hutan, which means “forest.” Thus, orangutan literally means “person of the forest.”

2. Orangutans are great apes, as opposed to monkeys, and are closely related to humans, having in common 97% of DNA.

3. Orangutans are extremely patient and intelligent mammals. They are very observant and inquisitive, and there are many stories of orangutans escaping from zoos after having watched their keepers unlock and lock doors.

4. The Sumatran and Bornean Orangutans’ rainforest habitats are disappearing at an alarming rate due to deforestation and clearing of the land for pulp paper and palm oil plantations, with the remaining forest degraded by drought and forest fires.

5. Orangutans face many other problems including: illegal logging, fires, palm oil plantations, poaching and hunting.

6. A male orangutan’s arms can stretch 8 feet from tip to tip!

7. Male orangutans are about four-and-a-half feet (1.3 m) tall, females are up to three-and-a-half feet (1 m) tall. 

8. Males weigh 130-200 pounds (59-90 kg), females weigh 88-110 pounds (40-50 kg). 

9. Orangutans have long, coarse hair up to three feet long, ranging in color from bright orange in young animals to dark maroon in older animals.

10. Arm span in males can be over seven feet (2 m) from fingertip to fingertip. 

11. Adult males have large cheek pads and grow long mustaches and beards as they age.

12. Orangutans spend most of their lives in trees and have special adaptations for their arboreal lifestyle. They have extremely long arms, mobile shoulders and strong upper muscles that allow them to swing through the trees with ease. They have long narrow hands and feet that are suitable for grasping branches. Although they have opposable digits on their hands and feet, the thumb and big toe are short, which helps their hands and feet easily hook over branches as they move through the trees. Orangutans find most of their food in the trees, travel through the forest high up in the trees, build sleeping nests in the trees every night and even mate in the trees.

13. Orangutans are highly intelligent and have comparatively larger brains compared to other primates. Wild orangutans have developed an amazing ability to use tools to obtain food. They use probes like twigs to extract insects and honey from tree trunks and blunt tools to scrape seeds from spiny fruit. They fashion leafy branches into umbrellas to shelter themselves from sun or rain. In captivity, they can be trained to communicate with sign language and are well known for their ability to dismantle their enclosures or even attempt escape.

14. Unlike the other great apes, orangutans are solitary except for females with offspring. Fruit is their favorite food. Since this food source tends to ripen seasonally it is therefore irregular and widely distributed. Foraging for fruit is highly competitive and each area can support only a limited number of orangutans. A solitary lifestyle spaces orangutans throughout the forest enabling them to find 
enough food.

15. Orangutans are the largest tree-living mammals in the world.

16. Except for humans, orangutans have the longest childhood of any animal in the world.

17. Orangutans have the most mobile lips and mouths of all the great apes; they are capable of many facial expressions.

18. There are two distinct species of orangutans – Sumatran and Bornean. They live on separate islands in the South Pacific and look very different.

19. The only one of the four great ape species that is not native to Africa.  All the rest (gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos) live in Africa.

20. Cheyenne Orangutan has never had a baby of her own, but she has acted as the foster mother for three baby orangutans: Luna (Kelly’s first baby), and Elok and Indah from the Memphis Zoo. Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are now recognized as different species, not subspecies.

21. When males fight, they charge each other, grapple, and bite each other’s heads and cheekpads.