Orangutan - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Orangutan Temporal range: Early Pleistocene – Recent PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Suborder:	Haplorhini
Infraorder:	Simiiformes
Family:	Hominidae
Subfamily:	Ponginae
Genus:	Pongo Lacépède, 1799
Type species
Pongo pygmaeus Lacépède, 1799 (Simia satyrus Linnaeus, 1760)
Species
Pongo pygmaeus Pongo abelii Pongo tapanuliensis †Pongo hooijeri †Pongo weidenreichi
Range of the three extant species
Synonyms
Faunus Oken, 1816 Lophotus Fischer, 1813 Macrobates Billberg, 1828 Satyrus Lesson, 1840

Orangutans (Pongo) are great apes belonging to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. There are two species of orangutan. They are from Southeast Asia. There are very few of them left, because loss of the jungle has reduced their habitat. There are orangutans on view at the Singapore zoo.

The name orangutan comes from two Malay words, orang which means person, and hutan which means forest; so orangutan means person of the forest.^[1]

• Genus Pongo
  • Bornean orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus
  • Sumatran orangutan, Pongo abelii
  • Tapanuli orangutan, Pongo tapanuliensis ^[2]

• 
  Bornean orangutan
• 
  Sumatran Orangutan
• 
  Tapanuli Orangutan

Orangutans have red-brown hair. They have long arms, and short legs. They can be strong like chimpanzees, gorillas and humans. They also have hands that are good for climbing. The Sumatran Orangutan is smaller and has longer hair than the Bornean orangutan. Orangutans have suffered from forest loss and are on the very edge of extinction.

Orangutans are from the rainforests on the islands Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia. They mostly live up in the trees. They eat fruit, leaves and bark and also insects and bird eggs. They drink water from rain that has been collected in leaves. Orangutans are not comfortable on the ground since they have to push themselves along with fists. Heavy adults move carefully through the trees, using their flexible feet to grasp the tree branches. Smaller orangutans swing with more ease.

An orangutan's diet consists mainly of fruit, they like ripe fruit. If they cannot find fruit they will eat bark, leaves and termites, rather than move to somewhere else to get food. About 60% of an orangutan's diet is fruit, 25% is leaves, 10% is bark and flowers, and 5% is termites and other insects.^[3]

After a pregnancy of 230–260 days the female gives birth to usually one baby, but sometimes two, every eight to nine years. The little ones stay with their mother for years, riding on the mother backend and learning to move through the forest. The young orangutans are playful and affectionate. When they are five or six years old, they become more independent and eventually go off on their own.^[4]

• Ape

• Primate Info Net Pongo Factsheet
• Information from Grungy Ape on the difference between the two Orang-utan species Archived 2010-01-05 at the Wayback Machine
• OrionSociety.org Archived 2007-02-08 at the Wayback Machine - 'Does an orangutan find Freedom in the Gift of Words? Do We?'
• Orang utan language project Archived 2009-03-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Facial Expression & Vocalizations
• Orangutan Foundation International non-profit organization dedicated to "support the conservation and understanding of the orangutan and its rain forest habitat while caring for ex-captive individuals as they make their way back to the forest."
• Orang Utan Republik Education Initiative non-profit organization whose mission is to secure the future of the orangutan through programs of education and outreach in Indonesia.
• The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
• Sumatran Orangutan Society International non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of Sumatran orangutans

Wikispecies has information on: Ponginae.

Wikispecies has information on: Pongo.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pongo.