Creature feature - orang-utans!
Look up at the trees in a tropical rainforest as nighttime approaches in parts of Sumatra and Borneo in Asia, and you'll see orang-utans preparing to go to sleep.
The beautiful red-haired apes sleep in forks of trees high off the ground, bending branches down to form comfortable mattresses of leaves and twigs. Sometimes they even make a roof from branches to keep them dry if it rains.
This orang-utan lives at the OFI Care Center, Indonesia
Orang-utans spend most of their time up in the trees. Adult females weigh up to 50 kilograms and males are twice as heavy, but their long, powerful arms and hook-shaped hands and feet mean they climb and swing from tree to tree with ease.
These big apes reach from one tree to the next, grasping the next branch with long hands or feet, and swing their bodies across the gap. When a gap between the trees is too wide for a baby to cross, its mother makes a living bridge for the baby to scamper across.
Orang-utans find their food in the trees where they live. They mostly eat fruit, but their diet also consists of nuts, bark, insects and other parts of plants and trees. Orang-utans even find the water they need for drinking up in the trees — in hollows, on leaves, or even on their own fur after it's been raining.
Fast facts- Orang-utans live in the wild only in Borneo and northern Sumatra.
- A female orang-utan has a baby, on average, only once every eight years.
- Orang-utans live to be about 35 years old in the wild; in captivity they can live 50 years or more.
- Orang-utans are considered to be highly intelligent animals.
Find out more about orang-utans at the Orangutan Foundation website!
Check out our other cool features:
- Michaela Strachan orang-utan interview
- WATCH! New Guinness World Records
- Orang-utan Diary interview
- WATCH! New dinosaur discovery
- Creature feature - red-eyed tree frogs!
