February 2019

Giving chances to others.

As one of the ‘unreleasable’ orangutans at SOC, Mamat has joined forest school at Tembak for almost 4 years. His forest skills develop very slowly. He very rarely climbs the trees and spends most of his forest school time on the forest floor, but he can find and eat some forest foods, such as rattan shoots and he occasionally explores the forest. Mamat also has a good social behavior with all orangutans at the school. He likes to invite play with other orangutans. On the other hand, he does influence the other orangutans’ behaviours and not always for the better! With the presence of Mamat, the other orangutans tend to spend their school time playing with Mamat. Due to this influence and the analyzed data from our behaviour and caretaker staff at Tembak, we believe it is better Mamat does experience fewer full forest school days, as this will then give a chance for the others to develop their skills in the forest.

We really hope that the sanctuary collaboration program with the government (especially Danau Sentarum National Park) for the ‘unreleasable orangutans’ can be realized soon so that Mamat and the other unreleasable orangutans can live permanently in the sanctuary. Some of the biggest cheekpadders may go to the big project of Pak Willie in East Kalimantan where they can get some big islands to liveon, with only other rescued male orangutans, so they have no reason to fight over females. ®text and picture provided by Masarang.hk and Sintang Orangutan Center

Sticky lap!

On orangutans daily rehabilitation process, some funny moments appear regarding the behaviour of orangutans towards something they affraid of.

At forest school especially in no/less fruit season, we give additional fruit for orangutans. One day when the caretakers gave additional fruit at feeding platform and one of the fruit was jackfruit, mamat ate the jackfruit without holding it. At another occasion, when Mamat stayed in the overnight enclosure, caretakers gave the orangutans another jackfruit and Mamat did the same to eat it. It seems Mamat hates with the sticky jackfruit sap and wants to keep his hands clean from it.

Text provided by Sintang Orangutan Center, ®www.soc.or.id