Status
Critically Endangered
Habitat
Lowland peat-swamp and dipterocarp forest
Range
Asia
Group
Primates
The largest arboreal animal, in a forest being converted to plantation.
Orangutans hold a mental calendar of the forest — which tree fruits when, and where. That knowledge takes years to build, which is why the young stay with their mother for up to eight years, the longest dependency of any non-human mammal.
Populations fell by roughly half between 1999 and 2015. The driver is habitat conversion, chiefly for oil palm and pulpwood, and the fires that follow drainage of peat.
Frames in the archive
Full gallery
Peat and Smoke
Kinabatangan — plantation edge behind.
