February 2019

I’m ready!

In 2018, Mona showed great improvement at the Sintang Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre. She is very close to Aming, but right now she doesn’t cry when they are apart. At the beginning, when both of them stayed in the same night enclosure with the babies, Aming always took very good care of Mona. When the others did naughty things to Mona, Aming did his best to protect her. But right now the situation is totally different; Mona is no longer a baby girl. She grows and becomes a tough girl! She no longer cries when she is apart from Aming. Yet, their social behaviour is still stong, as if they are brother and sister.

Her skills develop very well. She could solve any enrichments in a short time, even when the food is hidden very carefully and with difficult wrapping. She likes all fruits and veggies and could make simple nests by collecting leaves. These are the signs that she is ready to go to the next step to join the forest school as soon as possible. ®text and picture provided by Masarang.hk and Sintang Orangutan Center

Practicing makes you perfect..

Enrichment takes on many different form for the orangutan needs. The goal of enrichment is to stimulate their natural

instinct and live the same quality of life they could get in their natural environtment. Enrichment activities not only for entertain the orangutans but make them think, solve problem and work the same ways they would do in the wild.One day, the orangutans were given food in a bottle enrichment by the caretakers. For bigger and stronger orangutans it was easy to break the bottles out to get the fruit but for the babies it takes lot of effort and time. Mona, one of the babies, still does not know how to break the plastic bottle. When she got her enrichment she just kept trying to take the fruit out by her finger through the bottle mouth. For a moment she looked to the others and saw how Selly cleverly could get the fruit out of the bottle by crushing her bottle. Then she tried the way Selly did it and finally got her food little by little. Keep learning, Mona!

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