Orangutan Trivia
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53 free Orangutan trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This orangutan trivia quiz covers the three species (Bornean, Sumatran and the Tapanuli orangutan discovered only in 2017), the biology of Asia's only great ape (cheek flanges, throat-pouch long calls, kiss squeaks, the double-locked hook grip, the longest birth interval of any great ape and eight-year nursing) and its intelligence: nest 'pillows' and 'bunk beds', calculated reciprocity, Rakus treating his own wound with a medicinal vine, and Bonnie the whistling orangutan. It also covers orangutans and people: what the Malay name really means, Linnaeus calling it Homo troglodytes, Biruté Galdikas and Camp Leakey, Jenny meeting Darwin, Ken Allen the 'hairy Houdini', Sandra's Argentine court case, Sir Oran Haut-Ton standing for Parliament, Dr Zaius, King Louie and the Discworld Librarian. Conservation questions cover palm oil, population estimates and the fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans left. Every question was verified against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia article on orangutans) and carries a citation. Try our gorilla and chimpanzee quizzes to complete the great-ape set.
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Q 01In which 1978 film did Clint Eastwood's trucker hero keep a pet orangutan named Clyde?
Every Which Way but Loose
Every Which Way but Loose was a film Eastwood made against the advice of those around him, yet it became one of his biggest box-office hits.
Q 02Most Western sources say the name 'orangutan' comes from Malay words meaning what?
Person of the forest
Person of the forest: orang means 'person' and hutan 'forest', and the Malay term may first have meant forest-dwelling people rather than the ape.
Q 03What is the orangutan's genus?
Pongo
Pongo began as the name of a large African ape in an English sailor's tale, and naturalists later transferred it to the orangutans.
Q 04The orangutan species named in 2017 lives south of which Sumatran lake?
Toba
Toba: south of it, in Batang Toru, a hydroelectric plant was planned in the area where the new species lives most densely.
Q 05Which UK supermarket's 2018 Christmas advert, about an orangutan called Rang-tan, was refused clearance for TV?
Iceland
Iceland's advert was first made by Greenpeace, and Clearcast refused it because Greenpeace could not show it was not a political advertiser.
Q 06What did genome studies reveal about the Tapanuli orangutan?
It is closer to Bornean than Sumatran orangutans
It is closer to Bornean than Sumatran orangutans, despite living on Sumatra: its line split from Sumatran apes about 3.4 million years ago but from Bornean apes only about 674,000 years ago.
Q 07Chantek, an orangutan raised on a Tennessee university campus, learned to communicate using what?
American Sign Language
American Sign Language: raised in a campus trailer, Chantek also learned to clean his room and memorised the way to a fast-food restaurant.
Q 08Which extinct ape in the orangutan's subfamily was first identified from molars sold in Chinese drugstores?
Gigantopithecus
Gigantopithecus is thought to have died out after a more seasonal climate shrank the forests it depended on for food.
Q 09Why do humans have fewer chromosomes than orangutans?
Fusion
Fusion of two ancestral chromosomes formed human chromosome 2, which still carries the remnant of a second centromere.
Q 10What distinctive feature do dominant adult male orangutans develop?
Cheek pads or flanges
Cheek pads or flanges may stay undeveloped for years in a grown male while a dominant male is near, appearing once that dominant male is gone.
Q 11What do the male orangutan's throat pouches do?
Act as resonance chambers for long calls
Act as resonance chambers for long calls: inflating the pouch helps a male's call carry far, drawing in females and warning rival males away.
Q 12Among the great apes, orangutans are the most what?
Arboreal and solitary
Arboreal and solitary as they are, orangutans still come together when and where fruit is plentiful.
Q 13Which part of an orangutan's hand is unusually short, suiting it to hooking onto branches?
The thumb
Q 21How do Bornean orangutans get through the lean years after a forest-wide fruit glut?
Burning stored fat
Burning stored fat, put on by gorging while the forest fruits all at once, carries them through; when it runs out, their bodies start breaking down muscle instead.
Q 22A 2008 Leipzig Zoo study made orangutans the first non-human species documented doing what?
Calculated reciprocity
Calculated reciprocity is helping another while expecting payback, and earlier animal tests had found scarcely any evidence of it.
Q 23Bonnie, an orangutan at the US National Zoo, was recorded doing what after hearing a caretaker?
Whistling
The thumb is short and sits out of the way, so the long curved fingers can curl around thin branches as the ape hangs and swings.
Q 14Which big cat is a potential predator of orangutans on Sumatra?
The tiger
The tiger lives on Sumatra but not Borneo, which may be why Sumatran orangutans come down to the ground less than Bornean orangutans.
Q 15Besides fruit, leaves and insects, what unusual item do wild orangutans sometimes eat?
Mineral-rich soil
Mineral-rich soil may help: primates are thought to eat earth to take in minerals and to neutralise toxins from the leaves they eat.
Q 16What earns orangutans the nickname 'gardeners of the forest'?
Spreading seeds in dung
Spreading seeds in dung matters most for large-seeded plants, whose fruit smaller forest animals pass over, so those plants lean heavily on orangutans to travel.
Q 17What noise does an uncomfortable orangutan make?
A kiss squeak
A kiss squeak is made by sucking air in through pursed lips, and at Tuanan, Borneo, orangutans press leaves to their lips while calling, perhaps to sound bigger.
Q 18How does an orangutan mother get her youngster across a wide gap in the trees?
Bridges it with her body
Bridges it with her body: she holds branches on both sides so the youngster can climb across, and she gives less of this help as it grows more capable.
Q 19Orangutan mothers hold which parenting record among all mammals?
The longest nursing period
The longest nursing period can pass eight years, and barium from milk laid down in their teeth hints that youngsters nurse more when fruit runs short.
Q 20Carers at Borneo's orangutan 'forest schools' fake terror at a rubber model of which animal?
Snake
Snake fear is learned rather than inborn in orangutans, and orphans have no mother to copy, so their carers must act it out for them.
Whistling isn't in the natural orangutan repertoire; Bonnie learned it by copying a caretaker, without ever being trained to do it.
Q 24Orangutans have been observed using sticks to poke at which prey to make them leap from the water?
Catfish
Catfish jabbed with a stick could flop out of ponds into waiting hands, hinting that early human ancestors could also have fished with tools.
Q 25In 2022 a Sumatran orangutan named Rakus was seen treating a facial wound with what?
Chewed leaves of a vine
Chewed leaves of a vine that people also use as medicine covered the wound, which closed within five days with no sign of infection.
Q 26After a landmark Argentine rights case, Sandra the orangutan left Buenos Aires in 2019 for a sanctuary in which country?
United States
United States: after a 2015 Buenos Aires ruling called Sandra a non-human person owed better conditions, she moved to the Center for Great Apes in 2019.
Q 27Ah Meng, an orangutan once named a Special Tourism Ambassador, was the star attraction of which zoo?
Singapore Zoo
Singapore Zoo made her the host of its 'Breakfast with an Orang Utan' programme, and when she died in 2008 about 4,000 people came to pay their respects.
Q 28Which primatologist pioneered field study of orangutans from a Borneo site she named Camp Leakey?
Biruté Galdikas
Biruté Galdikas also persuaded people keeping orangutans as pets to hand them over, so they could be rehabilitated and released into the forest.
Q 29Sir Oran Haut-Ton, an orangutan who stands for Parliament, appears in which 1817 satirical novel?
Melincourt
Melincourt's Sir Oran is built on the theories of Lord Monboddo, who held that the orangutan belonged to the human species and only lacked speech.
Q 30An orangutan is the killer in which 1841 Edgar Allan Poe story?
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Murders in the Rue Morgue has witnesses who cannot name the language of a shrill voice, because it belongs to a sailor's orangutan brought from Borneo.