Man of the Forest

Borneo is famously known for being the home of the orang utan. It's quite hard to see them in the wild as they live independent and solitary lifes, only really coming together to mate or when the mother is looking after a bairn (of which they only have 3 or so in a lifetime). A lot of locals will keep them illegally as pets, so when they are reclaimed by the authorities they are generally taken to a rehabilitation centre. In this part of Borneo it's the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary, I went and checked them out.

Tasty fruits.

At Sepilok they've got about 30 or so orang utans, teaching them skills (nun-chuck skills, computer hacking skills, bow-staff skills) so that they can be re-introduced into the wild. They feed them twice daily at various feeding platforms so that tourists can give them lots of cash and taken pictures of them (cash to the sanctuary, pictures of the apes, wouldn't work well the other way round).

Was a cracking experience to see them all swinging about doing monkey-business, as it were. Sadly the place was crawling with tourists, particularly loud-mouth followers of the stars and stripes. I don't like to stereotype the yanks, but they don't know when to shut up when on holiday (sorry Foresters). Certainly took a touch of the shine off such an amazing spectacle.

Arms were legs and legs were arms with these guys. If it weren't for the head, at times you wouldn't have a clue as to which way round they were.

In Malay, orang utan means "man of the forest". I saw an orang utan once in Amsterdam zoo. He sat there in a rubber tired with his head balanced on his hand looking bored out of his mind. They struck me then as being so human-like in their body language, facial expressions and actions, and the orangs at Sepilok were no different and more positively, not a single one appeared bored. They were so humanoid and absolutely awesome to observe.

Hi Clyde, where's Clint?