Word: orangutan
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...grisly distinction, in danger of becoming the first ape to disappear from the wild. Perhaps 5,000-6,000 survive on Sumatra, half the number that existed as recently as 1998. There are 10,000-15,000 on Borneo, a decline of one-third in the same period. "Orangutan survival totally depends on the survival of the tropical forest," says Birute Galdikas. "It's as simple as that." Galdikas has been studying orangutans since the late 1960s, when she was dispatched to Indonesia by Louis Leakey, the world-renowned anthropologist who, along with his wife Mary, laid the foundation...
...Their lifestyle does, however, make them the easiest apes for humans to identify with. Because of their more solitary nature, orangutans display a more contemplative intelligence than the often frenetic chimpanzee or the gigantic, seemingly dopey gorilla. One look into an orangutan's almost human, emotion-charged eyes, and there's no denying our intimate kinship...
...Nobody knows this better than the six young women who are surrogate mothers to orangutan babies brought in for rehabilitation at the Balikpapan Orangutan Foundation on the west coast of Borneo. The orangutans, most of whom have been confiscated from illegal wildlife traders, some of them as far afield as Japan and Taiwan, are often in a state of shock, having just seen their mothers killed by poachers. "There's no difference between human babies and the orangutans," says Wiwiek, an open-faced 24-year-old surrogate mother dressed in her working clothes, a white jumpsuit and green rubber boots...
...these captive apes become intellectually dim cousins of their wild predecessors. "Orangutans are naturally the most intelligent of the great apes," says Willie Smits, a Dutch forester turned orangutan advocate. "They're so close to us, we can learn a huge amount about our own physiology, psychology and early origins." Smits talks enthusiastically of Van Schaik's research. The "spark" that enabled Van Schaik's particular group to use tools was a much higher level of sociability?sharing food, helping one another in tasks such as food collection?than is usual for orangutans. That in turn speaks volumes about...
...pictures after he stopped drinking, you might figure it out from the pictures. They suggest the mental climate of a man cleaning up his act. The old John was a circus clown shot out of his own cannon, so you'd expect his collection to have more of the orangutan behavior and chili-pepper colors you get from, say, David La Chappelle, the celebrity photographer who pinwheeled around John three years ago. You do find some of that in the Polaroid self-portraits Lucas Samaras made in the 1970s, when he used to develop the picture, then scribble over...