Orangutan

Orangutan
Temporal range: Early Pleistocene – Recent
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Bornean orangutan
(Pongo pygmaeus)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Ponginae
Genus: Pongo
Lacépède, 1799
Type species
Pongo pygmaeus
Lacépède, 1799 (Simia satyrus Linnaeus, 1760)
Species

Pongo pygmaeus
Pongo abelii
Pongo tapanuliensis
†Pongo hooijeri
†Pongo weidenreichi

Range of the three extant species
Synonyms

Faunus Oken, 1816
Lophotus Fischer, 1813
Macrobates Billberg, 1828
Satyrus Lesson, 1840

Orangutan climbing

Orangutans (Pongo) are a genus of great apes belonging to the tropical rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. There are three species of orangutan. They are from Southeast Asia. There are very few of them left, because loss of the jungle has reduced their habitat. There are orangutans on view at the Singapore zoo.

The name orangutan comes from two Malay words, orang which means person, and hutan which means forest; so orangutan means person of the forest.

Taxonomy

Evolutionary tree of the superfamily Hominoidea. It highlights the subfamily Homininae. First the gibbons (Hylobatidae) split from the main line some 18 million years ago. Next, the subfamily Ponginae broke away—leading to the current orangutan. Later the Homininae split into the tribe Hominini (with subtribes Hominina and Panina), and the tribe Gorillini

Appearance

Orangutans have red or auburn hair. They have long arms, and short legs. They can be very strong. They also have hands that are good for climbing. The Sumatran orangutan is smaller than the Bornean orangutan, but it is bigger than the recently discovered Tapanuli orangutan. The Sumatran orangutan has the longest hair out of the three orangutan species. Orangutans have suffered from forest loss and are on the very edge of extinction.

Life

Orangutans are from the tropical rainforests on the islands Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia. They mostly live up in the trees. They eat fruit, leaves, bark, insects and bird eggs. They drink water from rain that has been collected in leaves. Orangutans are not comfortable on the ground since they have to push themselves along with fists. Heavy adults move carefully through the trees, using their flexible feet to grasp the tree branches. Smaller orangutans swing with more ease.

Diet

An orangutan's diet consists mainly of fruit, they like ripe fruit. If they cannot find fruit they will eat bark, leaves and termites, rather than move to somewhere else to get food. About 60% of an orangutan's diet is fruit, 25% is leaves, 10% is bark and flowers, and 5% is termites and other insects.

Pregnancy

After a pregnancy of 230–260 days the female gives birth to usually one baby, but sometimes two, every eight to nine years. The little ones stay with their mother for years, riding on the mother backend and learning to move through the forest. The young orangutans are playful and affectionate. When they are five or six years old, they become more independent and eventually go off on their own.

References

  1. ↑ "Orangutan Facts –". orangutans-sos.org. Sumatran Orangutan Society. 2011. Archived from the original on 23 August 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  2. ↑ The Tapanuli Orangutan was discovered in Sumatra in 2017.
  3. ↑ "What do Wild Orangutans Eat?". Archived from the original on 2015-11-07. Retrieved 2015-11-26.
  4. ↑ Blue Planet Level 5, written by Dinorah Pous p.70

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