Word: orangutan
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Husky and hairy, with the flaming orange coloring of a bad dye job, the orangutan doesn't look like the most agile of primates. But in fact these great apes, native to the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, climb and swing nimbly through the canopy more than 100 feet in the air, their fleet-footed acrobatics allowing them to make their home in the treetops and access remote food sources, like the fruit at the very ends of branches. (Read "Kalimantan's Camp Orangutan...
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...
...Potential adoptees often greet visitors as they arrive, which is magical. This is no arm's-length orangutan encounter, with the shadows of great apes ambling through trees glimpsed through a long camera lens. At Camp Leakey, you can pat, hug and hold hands with the animals. Even getting to the camp is an enchantment: you putter up river for hours on a local kelotok boat, and weave through rain forest. "We need to have more tourists visit in order to provide a livelihood for people," says Ferry Candra, a national-park guide. "Without them, locals will just go back...
...With, at most, 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, experts predict that the species could disappear in less than 20 years if more is not done to preserve their habitat. In the battle to save the orangutan, the camp is at once the front line and a sanctuary. And as a bright-eyed baby climbs into your lap, you cannot help but wonder, with some sadness, if Camp Leakey is also the orangutan's last stand...