04 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi

Orang-utans are clever enough to use water as a problem-solving tool, an experiment inspired by Aesop’s fables has demonstrated.

When presented with a peanut floating deep down inside a transparent tube, the animals spat their drinking water into the tube to raise the treat to the top, where they could grab it (see video, right). Researchers say that the study is novel because it shows the insightful use of a liquid tool by a non-human primate.

Natacha Mendes at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, recalls that the idea for the study came out of a discussion with her colleagues about Aesop’s fables.

The team focused on one particular story, in which a clever crow throws stones into a pitcher to elevate the water to a level where the bird can access it for drinking. Mendes and her fellow researchers wondered whether the orang-utans they worked with could have a similarly smart insight.

Speedy learning

To test this out, the scientists presented five orang-utans (Pongo abelii) with clear plastic tubes, each containing a small amount of water along with a peanut. But, to the orang-utans’ great dismay, the peanuts floated too far down the tube for them to reach.

The frustrated apes tried everything they could to get to the peanuts – including biting, hitting, and kicking the tube.

It only took them about nine minutes on average, though, to figure out that a little bit of extra water could do the trick. At this point the orang-utans began taking mouthfuls of water from their drink dispenser and spitting the liquid into the tube, a trick that elevated the peanuts to an accessible point.

“This seems to be insightful behaviour because they haven’t seen this test before,” Mendes explains. “And as soon as they got the idea they continued to do it.”

And do it faster, Mendes adds. She presented each orang-utan with the peanut-containing tube 10 times. By the tenth attempt, it took the animals only 30 seconds before they started spitting water into the tube.

Intelligent spitting

Researchers also conducted control experiments, including one in which they taped the peanut to the top of the tube. The orang-utans did not spit into the tube, but instead simply grabbed the treat with their hands.

Mendes notes that archer fish (Toxotes jaculatrix) can spit water at flies to knock them into the water for eating (see Fast food for fish with perfect aim). But she says the orang-utans’ use of water represents a more sophisticated behaviour.

“There’s no comparison,” she says, pointing out that the apes have a conscious idea of what they are doing and consider other options, such as kicking the tube. “With orang-utans we are talking about a flexible strategy – that’s the big difference.”

Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0198)

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12182&feedId=online-news_rss20

JAKARTA, July 3 (Reuters) - Palm oil producer Wilmar International has been accused by an environmental group of illegally logging Indonesian forests, setting them on fire and violating the rights of local communities in the country.

Singapore-listed Wilmar , expected to be the world’s largest palm biodiesel manufacturer after approval of a $4.3 billion acquisition, denied the allegations by Friends of the Earth Netherlands.

Wilmar said in a statement on Tuesday it strictly adhered to a “zero burning policy” and did not engage in any logging activities.

“We will only develop plantations on land, which is approved by the government for the cultivation of oil palms,” it said.

Wilmar owns extensive palm plantations and refineries in Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s leading palm oil producers, where environmentalists say swathes of forest land are being stripped down to feed growing demand for bio-fuels.

The Friends of the Earth report accused the company of violating an Indonesian law requiring approval of an Environmental Impact Assessment before palm oil development starts, and said it was clearing forest beyond its allocated borders.

“Forests are being cut and burnt down illegally, Indonesian laws are being broken and local people are suffering,” Paul de Clerck, corporates campaigner at Friends of the Earth International, said in a statement.

The report highlighted the danger of the European Union’s recent commitment to replace 10 percent of its transport fuel market with biofuels by 2020.

“If the European Union continues to promote palm oil imports in order to meet its recently-adopted 10 percent biofuels target, this will simply aggravate the severe environmental and social impacts in countries like Indonesia.”

Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million hectares), or about 10 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forest, according to Rainforestweb.org, a portal on rainforests (www.rainforestweb.org).

But the tropical Southeast Asian country — whose forests are a treasure trove of plant and animal species including the endangered orangutans — has already lost an estimated 72 percent of its original frontier forest.

Indonesia, the world’s second largest palm oil producer, already has around 5 million hectares of land planted with oil palm and the government aims to develop between 2-3 million hectares more of oil plantations nationwide by 2010.

(Additional reporting by Ovais Subhani in Singapore)

Source: Reuters AlertNet

KUCHING, Sat 1 July:
Gangsters have been blamed for the illegal logging in Sarawak.

Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said gangsters were targeting wildlife sanctuaries and areas along the Sarawak-Kalimantan border.

“The illegal logging activities are so well-organised that only gangsters would be capable of something like this,” he said after attending the signing of an underwriting agreement between Sarawak Plantation Berhad and CIMB Investment Bank here.

Taib, who is also the state Minister of Planning and Resource Management, said in the past, illegal logging was sporadic and unorganised as the loggers were villagers.

“Now, it has become more organised because the gangsters have taken over.”

Taib praised the police for taking action against the gangsters. “The police have done a lot to curb the gangsters’ activities over the last few months.”

Taib said the enforcement unit of the Sarawak Forestry Corporation was also going all out to catch those involved in illegal logging.

“I am happy to see that the unit has caught a number of illegal loggers and seized a large quantity of logs from them.

“Many of the logs were taken from the wildlife sanctuaries and along the Sarawak-Kalimantan border,” he said.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/