- A large, mainly solitary arboreal ape with long red hair, long arms, and hooked hands and feet, native to Borneo and Sumatra.
- Orangutans are the world’s largest tree-climbing mammals.
- Their powerful arms are stronger and longer than their legs and can reach 2m in length
- Orangutan means ‘person of the forest’ in the Malay language
- Orangutans travel by moving from one tree to another and usually avoid climbing down to the ground
- They can live up to 50 years in the wild, average about 40 years
- The orangutan’s diet includes fruit, such as durians, jackfruit, lychees, mangosteens, mangoes, and figs, young leaves and shoots, insects, soil, tree bark, woody lianas, and occasionally eggs and small vertebrates
- Whether for a quick nap or a full night’s sleep, orangutans build treetop nests from branches and foliage to bed down in
- Of the four kinds of great apes, only the orangutan comes from Asia
- The orangutan’s hair colour, orange-reddish brown is unique in the ape world.
- Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water.
- The main predators of orangutans are tigers
