What a better way to celebrate fall rolling in, pumpkins on front porches, halloween coming to town and, obviously, pumpkin ice-cream, than by celebrating orangutans! The Sumatran Orangutan Society, or SOS, is campaigning to make october all about orangutans and has provided you with 31 things to do to be a great OranguFan.
Many of us hear the word drone and cringe; we picture the military using drones to drop bombs and other negative things. But recently drones are become cheaper and cheaper as the technology becomes commonplace, so what better path for the drone to take than to aide in conservation!
A new study suggests that orangutans (and one young gorilla) may be more capable of identifying types of animals than we had previously given them credit for. In the 1700’s Carolus Linneaus gave two names to each species, organizing species for the first time. He classified them in a hierarchical system, starting broad with kingdom, phylum, class, then getting more specific with family, genus, and finally the most specific, species. It took humans an embarrassingly long time to become so organized and look more critically at the animals we share our planet with.
Maybe you’ve read some past blog posts, or been following my journey, or maybe you just read the tagline at the top of my website, but I’m sure you’ve figured out that while I might be in Dallas, my heart lives in Indonesia. I will soon be pursuing a graduate degree at Oxford Brookes University to get my masters in Primate Conservation, which I will be talking about in my next ‘my journey’ post. But while perusing the Facebook page of my future school I came across this lovely blog titled “The Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project” which talks about the animals of Borneo and life of a field researcher.
Happy World Orangutan Day! A day especially for those fuzzy arboreal apes, orangutans! Orangutans are very special apes, they are the only arboreal ape and they are the only ape in found outside of Africa! The name orangutan is derived from the Malay words ‘orang’ and ‘hutan.’ ‘Orang’ means person and ‘hutan’ means forest, giving the orangutan the name person of the forest. These people of the forest are an incredible look into the evolution of humans, with their intelligent eyes and knack for gentle parenting, but unfortunately we are destroying their habitat at an alarming rate. 300 football fields worth of forest are cut down every single day in Indonesia and Malaysia.
I’m such an emotional sap. This brought tears to my eyes! But how could it not? It’s the miracle of birth seen in a completely new way. This captive Sumatran orangutan named Dana gave birth to a beautiful new baby girl, now why is this so fantastic? Well firstly because Sumatran orangutans are critically endangered, but secondly because it was the first ever orangutan birth caught on film so completely.
I am sure you have heard me preach about the evils of palm oil, again and again, but if you’ve actually tried to shop for products without palm oil you’ve probably found that you’re going without a lot of your normal snacks. It sucks! Goodness, I’ve missed popcorn, but now theres a way to find who is using sustainable palm oil!
Just a little orang tool use to brighten your day!
About a month ago I wrote a post called ‘it’s only 4 million acres‘ about an Indonesian govenor’s plan to open up 4 million acres of conserved rainforest to mining and plantation use on the island of Sumatra. That is the area of one million football fields.
This is my third time to Paris, and the last two times I visited I went to the natural history museum and it is by far my favorite museum in the entire world. Their collection of stuffed specimens is fantastic, and they even have a stuffed dodo bird. But every time I have wandered through those gardens that lead to the museum I never knew that there was a beautiful zoo just beyond the row of trees.
Endangered Living 