Word: orangutan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indonesia's leading cause of deforestation, says a 2007 U.N. report, with Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua the three worst-affected provinces. Thanks largely to the global appetite for palm oil, which is found in everything from chocolate bars to biofuels, the natural habitat of endangered animals such as the orangutan and Borneo rhino shrinks further each year. REDD could save them, said a recent study of Kalimantan by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia. They believe that the revenues generated by preserving a forest could not only compete with the profits of cutting it down for palm...
...PNAS study contains some other less than surprising facts - for instance, adult females swing conservatively when it comes to tree travel, while males and adolescents are the risk takers. But the ultimate point is that orangutans, as odd and ungainly as they look, are uniquely adapted to the jungle, to life among the trees - an existence that is being threatened by the continued logging of Southeast Asian jungles. "Orangutans can move in logged forest, but the energetic cost may be much greater, and food availability is likely to be lower, so populations become less healthy and less viable...
Until recently, however, scientists did not understand exactly how such a large primate - weighing up to 180 lb., orangutans are the largest living arboreal animal - can navigate the delicate branches at the top of the tallest trees. At that height, tree branches are thin and begin to wobble as animals climb on them, much as a suspension footbridge vibrates as people walk over it. Too much vibration and an orangutan can be thrown off altogether. From high in the trees, such a fall would be deadly. (See pictures of a bonobo Eden...
...orangutans' unique locomotion also helps them reduce the time and energy needed to climb. The more flexible a tree branch is, the more it will bend under an animal's weight. "That means they can lose height, and gaining height again is costly because you have to oppose gravity," points out Thorpe. When an orangutan leaps from a flexible branch it also loses motion energy - think of jumping off a pile of sand versus one of asphalt - and when they land on a flexible branch, they have to wait for the vibrations to stop before they can jump again, which...
...PNAS study found that by swaying from one flexible tree branch to the next, orangutans actually use less energy than they would if they leaped from branch to branch, or if they climbed down trees, moved on the ground and climbed back up again. (The fact that the Sumatran tiger - before it became critically endangered - was a serious threat to the orangutan probably helped encourage tree travel.) Climbing helps the orangutan adapt neatly to its arboreal environment...