A Sumatran orangutan may spend its entire life without touching the ground — almost entirely arboreal, moving on arms that span more than seven feet.Source 1Source 2
Nine-tenths of its food comes from the canopy: a hundred kinds of ripe fruit, figs and durian above all.Source 1Source 2
In Sumatra, wild orangutans use tools, working seeds out of hard-shelled fruit.Source 1
Every evening, each one weaves a fresh sleeping nest of branches, high in the trees.Source 1Source 2
They breed more slowly than any other primate: one baby every seven or eight years, dependent on its mother for at least five.Source 1
Their stronghold, the Leuser Ecosystem, is the last place on Earth where orangutans, elephants, rhinos, and tigers still live together in the wild.Source 3
The threat is the chainsaw's economics: forest logged and converted to oil-palm plantations, roads cutting the survivors into fragments.Source 4Source 5
Protection is working where it is tried: Sumatra's rescue unit has saved over two hundred orangutans, and two million replanted trees are becoming forest again.Source 6
Camera traps at one replanted site recently filmed a wild mother and infant swinging through trees people planted by hand.Source 7
To witness the orangutan is to stand with the gardeners of the forest — the seed-carriers the rainforest needs to regrow.Source 4
