Bornean Orangutan In The Wild: Article Analysis

This article discusses the second instance of observed meat eating by a Bornean orangutan in the wild. The first instance of meat eating in Bornean orangutans was in Gunung Palung National Park, where a young female was observed hunting and consuming a rat. In this instance a flanged male orangutan found in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia was observed eating an adult horse-tailed squirrel. The observers concluded that since there was no evidence of a chase or sounds of distress the orangutan most likely found the animal already dead and scavenged the carcass. Orangutans are largely frugivorous but there are reports of them eating vertebrate meat by catching, killing and eating animals such as the slow loris. There have been reports of Sumatran …show more content…
On average Sumatran orangutans took anywhere from 140 minutes to 244 minutes to eat their prey, whereas in this case the orangutan only took 41 minutes. The article also suggests that a low food availability would not be the reason for the Bornean orangutan’s scavenging because the month this incident was observed had a higher fruit availability than previous months. In Sumatran orangutans it has been observed that slow loris might be an alternative food option when other food options like fruit are limited. Another interesting observation of this incident is that all but one other reports of meat eating in orangutans have been adult females. Orangutans also have an extremely high rate of success of catching their prey when hunting, with only one observed case of failure when trying to hunt a slow loris. Unlike in chimpanzees there has been no recorded meat sharing between orangutans as they are a semi-solitary species. It can be concluded that by the extreme rarity of meat-eating observations in Bornean orangutans that meat is not a typical part of their