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Bornean Orangutan

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The Bornean Orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus, is a species of orangutan native to the island of Borneo. Together with the slightly smaller Sumatran Orangutan, it belongs to the only genus of great apes found in Asia.

The Bornean Orangutan has a life span of about 35 to 40 years in the wild; in captivity it can live to be 60.

Taxonomy

There is evidence that there was gene flow between the geographically isolated Bornean Orangutan populations until recently. The Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan species diverged 1.5 – 1.7 million years ago. This occurred well before the two islands (Borneo and Sumatra) separated. The two species of orangutan are more distantly related than the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. Despite the difference, the two orangutan species were only considered subspecies until as recently as 1996, following sequencing of mtDNA.

The Bornean Orangutan has three subspecies:

Ecology

The Bornean Orangutan lives in tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests in the Bornean lowlands as well as mountainous areas 1500 m in elevation. It lives at different heights in the trees and moves large distances to find trees bearing fruit. Its diet consists of fruit as well as shoots, bark, mineral rich soil and bird eggs. It also eats insects but to a lesser extent than the Sumatran Orangutan.

The Bornean Orangutan travels on the ground more than its Sumatran counterpart. It is theorized this may be in part because there is no need to avoid the large predators which only exist in Sumatra such as the Sumatran Tiger.

Behavior and reproduction

The Bornean Orangutan is more solitary than the Sumatran Orangutan. Two or three orangs that have overlapping territories may interact for small periods of time. Males and females generally come together only to mate. Rape is common among orangutans. Sub-adult males will try to mate with any female, though they probably mostly fail to impregnate them since mature females are easily capable of fending them off. Mature females prefer to mate with mature males.

Newborn orangutans nurse every 3 to 4 hours, and begin to take soft food from their mothers' lips by 4 months. the first year of its life the baby clings to its mother's abdomen by entwining its fingers in and gripping her fur. Babies stay with their mothers until they are about 8 or 9 years old and have a long childhood compared to other apes.

Status

The Bornean Orangutan is more common than the Sumatran, with about 45,000 individuals existing in the wild; there are only about 7,500 of the Sumatran species left in the wild. Orangutans are becoming increasingly endangered due to habitat destruction, and the bushmeat trade, and young orangutans are captured to be sold as pets, usually entailing the killing of its mother.

References

External links



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Last updated on Saturday March 08, 2008 at 16:26:08 PST (GMT -0800)
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