How smart are orangutans Lu Gao
Fu Manchu was one of the most
notorious escape artists
at the Omaha Zoo in the 1960s.
But he wasn’t a performer,
he was an orangutan.
The keepers who locked
his enclosure every night
were baffled to find him outside
the next day
hanging out with friends in a tree,
or sunning on the roof.
Only after installing cameras
did they realize
Fu Manchu had been picking the lock
with a metal wire that he kept hidden
under his cheek pouch.
The keepers shouldn’t have been
surprised at Fu Manchu’s cunningness.
Along with our other great ape cousins,
the gorillas,
chimps,
and bonobos,
they belong to our Hominidae
family tree,
which stretches back 14 million years.
But it’s not just their striking red hair
that makes orangutans unique
among our cousins.
As the only great apes from Asia,
orangutans have adapted to a life
high in the rain forest canopies.
Many of the skills they learn
are transmitted through the special bond
they have with their mothers,
the most extended in the animal kingdom
next to humans.
Orangutan mothers usually give birth
to one baby at a time,
waiting up to eight years before
having another.
This gives the young,
who begin as fully dependent infants,
plenty of time to learn how to climb
and distinguish the hundreds of plants
and fruits that make up their diet.
Female orangutans even stay with
their mothers into their teen years
to learn child-rearing.
As they grow up, orangutans also develop
a complex set of cooperative social skills
by interacting with their peers
and siblings.
Much like ourselves,
young orangutans involuntarily mimic
the facial expressions
and emotions of their playmates,
with behaviors that closely parallel
human smiling and laughter.
Once they finally venture out
on their own,
orangutans continue to develop
their resourcefulness,
putting the skills they’ve learned
into practice.
Adults build a new nest each night
by carefully weaving twigs together,
topping them with soft leaves,
pillows, and blankets.
This process requires dexterity,
coordination, and an eye for design.
Orangutans also use a variety of tools
to make their lives in the jungle easier.
They turn branches into fly swatters
and back scratchers,
construct umbrellas when it rains,
make gloves from leafy pads,
and even use leaves as bandages
to dress their wounds.
But orangutan intelligence goes far
beyond jungle survival.
Research in controlled environments
has shown that orangutans are self-aware,
being one of the few species to recognize
their own reflections.
They also display remarkable foresight,
planning, and cognition.
In one experiment, researchers taught
an orangutan to use a straw
to extract his favorite fruit soup
from a box.
That orangutan was later given the choice
between the straw
or a grape that could be
eaten right away,
and he chose the straw just in case
he was given another box of soup.
In another experiment, orangutans figured
out how to reach peanuts
at the bottom of long tubes
by spitting water into them.
While orangutans are able to pass
cognitive tests with flying colors,
there are certain problems that they
need our help to solve.
Indonesia has the world’s highest rate
of deforestation,
and millions of acres of rain forest
are burned annually
to support the logging
and palm oil industries.
Deforestation exposes the 30,000
orangutans remaining in the wild
to poachers.
They kill mothers so that baby orangutans
can be sold as exotic pets.
But fortunately, the story often
doesn’t end here.
Orphans can be confiscated
and given a second chance.
At special forest schools, they recover
from emotional trauma
and continue to develop
essential life skills.
Against all odds, these orphans
demonstrate incredible resilience
and readiness to learn.
In Malay, the word orangutan translates
literally to “the person of the forest,”
a reminder of our common lineage.
And despite orangutans being some
of the smartest animals on Earth,
outsmarting their extinction requires
the creativity, empathy, and foresight
that our species share.