Orangutan ‘New’ Behaviour
New variant “Culture” Amid Orangutan Forest Damage
by M. Yasis
Race against time. That’s what researchers encountered a group of students from the faculty of orangutans National Univesritas Biology, Jakarta, in cooperation with researchers and students Anthropologist University of Zurich (Duke), Switzerland. They conducted a series of studies of wild orangutans in the middle of the shrinking forests of Borneo.
Therefore, the researchers did not waste the opportunity to examine all related to the orangutan. They conducted the study since August 2003. They studied the habits of orangutans, the cruise was associated with natural forest rehabilitation. When orangutans explore eating fruit or fruit seeds and plants so closely associated with the rehabilitation of forest surrounding forests. The researchers also examined the orangutan dung which was highly influential in forest regeneration. Research also focused on nesting behavior problems and vocals, “” social system “, and” culture of orangutans in the community.
“This study will explore the lives of orangutans about itself. Especially wild orangutans live in secondary forests such as in Master, Kapuas, Kalimantan. While forests are still there and there are 3000 wild orangutans still live there. This becomes important, because there, the forest that surrounded the forest damage due to unusual activity in the surrounding mining companies. So this research as a race against time. Because the forest where we orangutan habitat is also increasingly concerned about, “said Dr. Sri Suci Utami Atmoko, Indonesian orangutan expert, in between the presentation Ekspose Research, at the University Nasional early May 2006.
This research series itself led directly by colleagues namely Prof. Dr. Carel van Schaik (University of Zurich), with research sites in the Research Center (forest) Master, Central Kalimantan and its surroundings. Meanwhile, Prof Dr Anne Russon (University of York, Canada), led the research on Kaja Island, Central Kalimantan, where the pre-rehabilitation of orangutans wild release Center Nyaru Menteng Orangutan reintroduction, along with students of University of Palangkaraya.
Holy explained that there are surprising results associated with these recent studies are planned to be presented at a national symposium this July 10, 2006. For example, they found the six orangutans innovations they have not found in other places. Long ago, precisely in 2003, Holy with Carel and a number of primate experts and other world orangutan reveal the results of their research for several decades. The results identified 24 cultural innovation both orangutans in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
“The results of research conducted since August 2003 is also a revision of previous research results. Mainly related to the variation in orangutan behavior, “added the Holy.
Orangutan Culture Findings
Major findings of 24 “innovation culture” that the orangutan direct special attention widely by the media world. Even published in the prestigious scientific journal Science Magazine. The result was considered sensational scientific world primates. For all this “culture” is considered only a man possessed. But in fact this primate scientists succeeded in proving that the chimpanzee than anthropologists have called a “culture” more advanced of its kind, found the orangutan was having “culture” is not inferior to those of advanced chimpanzees.
Even the discovery of this cultural problem is considered more or less at least similar to the early beginning of human culture with ancestors grandmothers ancestors of great apes. Carel is a motor that research explained that orangutans have three of the four categories that he calls the cultural elements are: label, sign, and skills.
Examples have occurred in wild orangutans in the jungle swamps Kluet, South Aceh, Sumatra. There are technical differences in terms of eating the fruit of prickly hard “cemanggang” (Neesia sp) between groups of orangutans separated by a broad base of the river with a group of orangutans in opposite.
