Lethal List #3 - Bornean Orangutan

Another critically endangered creature on the World Wildlife Fund's list of species is the Bornean Orangutan.

The Bornean Orangutan lives, as its name would suggest, in Borneo. Borneo is one of the five Indonesian islands in the Pacific Ocean, but is actually controlled by three different countries. Borneo has one of the oldest rain forests in the world, and contains a number of different forest and swamp ecosystems with a large amount of biodiversity.

The Bornean Orangutan is divided into three sub-species. The Northwest, Northeast and Central Bornean Orangutans. The population of all three sub-species is somewhere between 45 thousand and 70 thousand with the Northwest Bornean Orangutan sitting at only about 1500 individuals.

The scientific name of orangutans is Pongo pygmaeus. Orangutans are the only Great Apes native to Asia and are the most distant relatives to humans of all Great Apes. While anthropology and biology change constantly as new discoveries are made, currently it is supposed that orangutan lineage split from the other Great Apes around 13 million years ago.

Orangutans are solitary, with males finding reproductively available females using calls they produce with large cheek pouches. Gestation is similar to that of humans, being eight to nine months, and offspring spend the first seven years of their lives with their mothers.

The Bornean Orangutan population is still in decline, largely due to the heavy logging of their rain forest homes. Luckily, there are a number of organisations working hard to try and save these amazing relatives of ours. One example is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, which works with local communities and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry to preserve the habitat of the orangutans, as well as save and rehabilitate injured members of the species.

#animals #orangutan #endangeredspecies