REUTERS FACTBOX: Asia’s orangutans on the brink of extinction
Mon May 28, 2007 3:28AM EDT
Source: http://www.reuters.com/
(Reuters) - Asia’s only ape and the world’s largest arboreal mammal, shaggy red orangutans could be extinct in the wild in ten years the United Nations estimated this year.
Here are some facts on the vanishing “person of the forest”:
COMMON ANCESTORS:
– With 97 percent similar DNA, orangutans and humans are thought to have split from a common ancestor 18 million years ago. Chimpanzees, humankind’s closest relative with 99 percent similar DNA, diverted off around four million years ago.
– The oldest orangutan fossils were found in Africa and date from about 14 million years ago, although they have long disappeared from Africa. They are the only ape to have headed east to Asia.
AN HISTORICAL “INSULT”:
– Collectors and scientists brought the first orangutans to Europe in the eighteenth century. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) classified humans and the three known great apes (chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas) as Primates in the 1760s, before the fourth ape, the Bonobo, joined the hominid family.
– Some regarded the classification as an insult to human dignity, as it dissolved the divide between man and beast.
THE UNIQUE ORANGUTAN:
– Unlike other apes, orangutans are semi-solitary, and spend 99 percent of their time in the trees. Sleeping high up in nests they build every night, they only go to the ground to forage.
– Females typically give birth once every eight years, and single motherhood is the norm — babies stay with mothers for six to seven years to learn forest skills. This is the longest time between births of any mammal, and the longest childhood dependence period of any animal.
– Indonesian lore relates the reclusive “person of the forest” or “orang hutan” can talk but chose not to, and descended from a red-haired man who fled to the forest to escape his debts.
THE FIRST APE TO VANISH?:
– The world’s 7,500 critically endangered Sumatran orangutan are likely to be one of the first of the great apes to vanish. Numbers fell by as much as a third after the 1997/1998 fires swept the island. Only the mountain gorilla has a smaller population, of approximately 700.
– There are approximately 38,000 central Bornean orangutans and 3,000 Northwest Bornean orangutans.
– Of the three other apes, there are 147,000-257,000 chimpanzees, 111,200 gorillas, and 10,000-50,000 bonobos living in the wild in Africa, the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates.
KEY THREATS:
– The United Nations cites rapid forest clearances for oil palm plantations as the greatest threat to the orangutan, over other threats like forest fires and illegal logging.
– Despite being legally protected since 1931, orangutans have been widely kept as pets in Indonesia and smuggled abroad. Their average price in Java is US$400, two to three times the original price paid to hunters in Kalimantan, the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC estimates.
Sources: Reuters, www.orangutan.com, The United Nations, The Last Stand of the Orangutan — State of emergency: illegal logging, fire and palm oil in Indonesia’s national parks, (www.grida.no/Products.aspx?m=23&amid=571), The World Wide Fund for Nature, Great Apes,
(www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/about_species/species_factsheets/great_apes/index.cfm) TRAFFIC, In Full Swing, An Aseesment of Trade in orang-utans and Gibbons on Java and Bali, Indonesia, (www.traffic.org/content/462.pdf)
