Orangutans

An orangutan took center stage in the 1996 feature, Dunston Checks In, co-starring with Jason Alexander from Seinfeld-fame, Faye Dunaway, Eric Lloyd and Rupert Everett.

Telling the tale of how a mischievous orangutan made friends with a boy in a luxury hotel, the movie didn’t exactly become the epic comedy/adventure film flick it was poised to be, but it effectively managed to draw attention towards one of the most easily and readily recognized of apes in the world, the orangutan.

Found in the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, the orangutan remains to be one of the most famous of the great apes, known for living most of their lives up in trees. But as they are the most “tree dwelling” or arboreal of the great apes, the orangutan is also the most solitary of the bunch, known mostly for the bond between mothers and their young, with baby orangutans predominantly dependent on their mothers for two years since their birth.

As the orangutan’s redish-hued fur remains to be one predominant orangutan characteristic, the intelligence of orangutans is another trademark sported by the species, with different orangutans exhibiting extensive intelligence markers such as the implementation of tools for various “jobs” and activities, as well as the creation of “beddings” utilizing leaves, barks and twigs.

Being the subject of various tests and studies focused in assessing the orangutan’s intelligence capacities, they have also long been poached by poachers, leaving the great ape with its highly endangered status.

With its name attributed to have been taken from the Malay “person of the forest”, the orangutan is truly one of the world’s most beautiful creatures, the gentle giants of the forest whose endearing existence means a lot in the conservation and preservation of the world’s natural ecology and natural habitats.