60 Fun Facts About Orangutan

On which two islands are wild orangutans found?

During the Pleistocene they ranged across Southeast Asia and southern China.

Most Western sources say the name 'orangutan' comes from Malay words meaning what?

Orang is 'person' and hutan is 'forest'; the Malays used it for forest-dwelling humans before Westerners applied it to the ape.

What is the orangutan's genus?

The name comes from Andrew Battel's 16th-century account of two African 'monsters', Pongo and Engeco, which were probably gorillas.

How many orangutan species were recognised as of 2025?

Bornean, Sumatran, and the Tapanuli orangutan, identified definitively in 2017.

The Tapanuli orangutan, described in 2017, is found only in which area?

Fewer than 800 survive, making it one of the most endangered great apes.

What was the surprising twist about the Tapanuli orangutan's genetics?

Its range is thought to be near where ancestral orangutans first entered Indonesia from mainland Asia.

The orangutans are the only surviving members of which subfamily?

That subfamily also included Gigantopithecus, the largest primate ever, which lived in China until 300,000 years ago.

Which extinct giant ape, the largest primate known, belonged to the orangutan's subfamily?

It lived in China from 2 million to about 300,000 years ago.

Under what name did Linnaeus first describe the orangutan in 1758?

His student Christian Emmanuel Hopp renamed it Simia pygmaeus in 1760, and Lacépède supplied Pongo in 1799.

How many diploid chromosomes does an orangutan have?

That matches gorillas and chimpanzees; humans have 46 because two ancestral chromosomes fused.

What distinctive feature do dominant adult male orangutans develop?

The pads are mostly fatty tissue; subordinate males can delay developing them for years while a dominant male is present.

What do the male orangutan's throat pouches do?

A long call begins with grumbles, peaks with pulses and ends with bubbles.

Among the great apes, orangutans are the most what?

Social bonds are mostly between mothers and their dependent offspring; social grooming is rare.

How much does an adult male orangutan typically weigh?

Females are about half that, at around 37 kg; the tallest orangutan recorded stood 180 cm.

What is the approximate arm span of a male orangutan?

Their arms are proportionally long and their legs short, and their hips rotate almost like shoulders.

How does orangutan hair colour change with age?

The skin underneath is grey-black, and males can grow a beard.

Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, how do orangutans move on the ground?

They rarely descend at all; in the trees they use a double-locked hook grip with fingers curled against the palm.

Which big cat is a potential predator of orangutans on Sumatra?

Clouded leopards and wild dogs are also potential threats.

Fruit can take up what share of an orangutan's foraging time?

Even in lean times fruit is 16% of feeding; figs are the favourite, and they will also eat slow lorises.

Orangutans are thought to be the sole seed disperser of Strychnos ignatii, a vine containing which toxin?

They also eat soil for its kaolin minerals, which may counter the tannins and phenolic acids in their diet.

What noise does an uncomfortable orangutan make by sucking air through pursed lips?

Wild orangutans in Tuanan cup leaves to their mouths to amplify it, possibly to sound bigger than they are.

Orangutans have the longest interval between births of any great ape. How long is it?

A female first gives birth at about 15 and, unlike other apes, shows no sexual swellings to signal fertility.

Female orangutans may nurse their offspring for up to how many years, longer than any other mammal?

Young reach adolescence at six or seven and can live alone, but stay connected to their mothers.

What is orangutan 'buddy travel'?

It starts around eighteen months, when the infant is no longer clinging permanently to its mother's belly.

Which mating behaviour is unusually common in orangutans compared with other mammals?

Females prefer flanged males and pair with them for protection; male orangutans, unusually, do not seem to practise infanticide.

What extras do orangutans add to make their night nests more comfortable?

They bend big branches into a foundation, add leafy 'mattress' branches, then braid the tips in for stability.

A 2008 Leipzig Zoo study made orangutans the first non-human species documented doing what?

That is helping another individual with the expectation of being paid back.

Bonnie, an orangutan at the US National Zoo, was recorded doing what after hearing a caretaker?

She did it without expecting a food reward, showing orangutans can learn to control their vocal folds to mimic new sounds.

Orangutans have been observed using sticks to poke at which prey to make them leap from the water?

They also keep tools for later use and prefer to hold tools in their mouths.

In 2022 a Sumatran orangutan named Rakus was seen treating a facial wound with what?

The wound had closed within five days and healed within weeks, leaving only a small scar.

In 2014 an Argentine court ruled Sandra the orangutan must be moved to a sanctuary in which country?

The ruling granted her 'partial or controlled freedom'; Spain had recognised some great-ape rights in 2008.

What are orangutans called in Sarawak?

'Mawas' is used elsewhere in Borneo and Sumatra; some central Borneo beliefs hold it unlucky to look one in the face.

Which Dutch anatomist gave the first scientific description of the orangutan in 1779?

He mistakenly thought flanged and unflanged males were separate species.

Which primatologist pioneered field study of orangutans from a Borneo site she named Camp Leakey?

She arrived in Tanjung Puting in 1971 and is one of 'Leakey's Angels' with Goodall and Fossey.

Sir Oran Haut-Ton, an orangutan who stands for Parliament, appears in which 1817 satirical novel?

Thomas Love Peacock used the ape's purity as a 'natural man' to mock the corruption of civilised Britons.

An orangutan is the killer in which 1841 Edgar Allan Poe story?

Walter Scott had already cast one as an antagonist in Count Robert of Paris in 1832.

In Planet of the Apes, orangutans are typically portrayed as what?

Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel set the template; Zaius is the science minister.

Which jazzy orangutan did Disney add to its 1967 Jungle Book, wanting Mowgli to teach him about fire?

He does not appear in Kipling's original stories at all.

Which character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels is an orangutan?

He was turned into one by a magical accident and firmly refused to be changed back.

Jenny, a London Zoo orangutan dressed in human clothes, is remembered for meeting which scientist?

He compared her reactions to those of a human child.

Ken Allen, nicknamed 'the hairy Houdini', became famous in the 1980s for escaping from which zoo?

He got a fan club, T-shirts, bumper stickers and a song, The Ballad of Ken Allen.

How does the IUCN classify all three orangutan species?

Habitat loss to palm oil plantations, logging and the pet trade are the main threats.

Conversion of forest to plantations of which crop is a major factor in orangutan habitat loss?

Logging, mining, road fragmentation and hunting add to the pressure.

A 2018 study found Bornean orangutans declined by roughly how many individuals between 1999 and 2015?

A 2016 estimate still put the Bornean population at about 104,700, against 14,613 Sumatran.

Fewer than how many Tapanuli orangutans are estimated to remain?

That makes it one of the most endangered great apes on Earth.

Who founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, the largest orangutan rescue organisation?

It runs the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation programme founded by Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

Alba, rescued in 2017 in Kapuas Hulu, was notable for being what?

Volunteers estimated albinism at about one in ten thousand; it was the first BOS had seen in 25 years.

Jacobus Bontius reported in 1631 that Malays claimed the orangutan could talk but chose not to, for what reason?

Modern scholars suspect Bontius was actually describing humans with a medical condition, not apes.

The Sumatran orangutan was the third great ape to have its genome sequenced, in which year?

Bornean orangutans turned out to have less genetic diversity than Sumatrans despite a population six to seven times larger.

What was Camper's mistake about male orangutans?

The confusion was corrected only after his death.

Which lowland forest type do orangutans particularly favour?

They cluster near rivers in freshwater and peat swamp forest, and thin out at higher elevations.

Wild orangutans at Tuanan, Borneo, use leaves as tools for what purpose?

The trick may fool listeners into thinking the ape is a larger animal.

Which fossil ape from Thailand, 5-7 million years old, is the closest known relative of living orangutans?

Sivapithecus lived in India and Pakistan, Lufengpithecus in southern China and Thailand.

What is the alternative name for the orangutan used in much of Borneo and Sumatra, outside Sarawak?

Some central Bornean folk beliefs hold it is bad luck to look an orangutan in the face.

In which year did Birute Galdikas arrive in Borneo to begin her field studies?

With Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey she is one of the so-called Leakey's Angels.

Which London menagerie received an orangutan in 1817 that was taken on coach rides in a smock and hat?

He rejected other animals' company except a dog and was even served drinks at an inn.

Which San Diego Zoo orangutan was a famous 'character actor' in the 1930s and 1940s?

Joe Martin performed at Universal City Zoo in the 1910s and 1920s.

Roughly how rare are albino orangutans, according to BOS volunteers?

Alba, rescued in 2017, was the first albino the foundation had seen in 25 years.

Which orangutan rehabilitation centre is located in Sabah, Malaysia?

Semenggoh and Matang are in Sarawak, while Bukit Lawang is in Sumatra.

The Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program was founded by which conservationist?

It is run by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.