Interesting fact about orangutan!

Fact #1 - Male orangutans become fully mature at about 15 years of age.

Fact #2 - Orangutan predators include tigers, leopards, and even large pythons.

Fact #3 - Male orangutans have territories that they defend against other male orangutans.

Fact #4 - Orangutans live to be about 35 years old in the wild; in captivity they can live 50 years or more.

Fact #5 - The word orangutan comes from the Malay language and means 'person of the forest' - from the words ‘orang' meaning people and ‘hutan' meaning forest.

Fact #6 - Orangutans only have one baby at a time. There is a lot to learn about life in the forest and so babies stay with their mother and learn from her until they are 7 or 8 years old - this is longer than any other mammal except humans.

Fact #7 - Orangutans make umbrellas for themselves out of big leaves when it rains, and use sticks to get honey from beehives.

Fact #8 - In the earlier times, people thought an orangutan to be a person hiding in the trees, trying to avoid having to go to work or become a slave.

Fact #9 - Every evening, orangutans construct a ‘nest’, of leaves and branches, on trees, in which they will curl up and sleep at night.

Fact #10 - Orangutan do not swim!

Communication

Male Orangutan have this thing called the long call. It likely also serves other functions, including a display to attract sexually receptive females, and a signal to inform the community of the location of the dominant male. Males tend to call in bad weather, when another male is visible or calling, when close to a sexually receptive female, or as an element of copulatory behavior. Calls are audible up to 1.2 mi (2 km) from the source. Other vocalizations include a variety of grunts, squeaks, moans, barks, and screams. Alarmed and agitated individuals produce "kissing" and "gluck-gluck gluck" sounds that seem to indicate their level of annoyance. These noises are often accompanied by aggressive physical displays, such as shaking and breaking branches.

Orangutan's diet

Most of the Orangutan food are made up of fruits, fruits like figs and durian is their favorite. Babies rely on their parents to teach them how to distinguish the difference between the fruits, some could be harmful to the orangutans. Orangutan spend at least 6 hour a day foraging for food. Orangutans get most of their water from the succulent fruits they eat, but will also drink from rivers and streams. Mother orangutans sometimes let their young drink from their mouths.

Field trip

My Psychology class and I went to Zoo Atlanta on October 21, 2009. We are assigned to do a research for a specific animal. My animal was the Orangutan. A question about the orangutan came up to my mind, the question is : "What will the orangutan do when they observe people?" That question later became the question for my Ethogram.

I did some research and found out some common behavior that the orangutan will do when a human approach them. Here are the list of behaviors.

1) Roll on the ground

2) Cross arms

3) Scratch head

4) Smile

5) Moan

6) Climb the tree

7) Cover themselves

8) Lay down

9) Groom themselves

10) Jump around

11) Hide

here's the ethogram

The ethogram answered my question, Orangutan likes to climb the tree and hide when they see humans. They also like to scratch their head, that shows that the orangutan are shy and confused.

About the orangutan.

The orangutan is the largest arboreal animal in the world. Females weigh between 65 to 110 pounds, and can grow to about 1.3 meters in height. Males weigh from 110 to 200 pounds, almost twice as much as females, and can grow to about 1.8 meters. This difference between males and females is called sexual dimorphism. Males also grow large cheek pads made out of fibrous tissue and a throat sac under the chin; these help the male produce a long call that can last up to two minutes and be heard up to 1 kilometer away. Both males and females have thick, long reddish-brown hair and grow a beard and mustache as they mature.