Orangutan Survival Skill #6 - Fruit Eating

The BOS Foundation cares for and rehabilitates orangutans at its two centers, Nyaru Menteng in Central Kalimantan and Samboja Lestari in East Kalimantan, with the aim of releasing them back to the forest once they are ready for independence. In order to do that, the staff needs to help the orangutans learn the various life skills that they will need to survive in the wild unaided by humans. These skills are taught directly by the dedicated surrogate mothers and technicians in Forest School.
We now present to you 10 of the most important skills they must master!

While orangutans eat a wide variety of forest foods, their preferred food item is fruit! Dependent on season and location, orangutans can feed on hundreds of different species of wild fruits. Thus, it is critical that they can identify what fruits are safe to eat and learn how to open them. Eating whole, soft fruits like wild fig and guava is pretty straight forward, but our Forest School students also need to know how to access fruits with hard exteriors like durian and coconut, which require cracking, peeling, and breaking to reach the pulp and seeds within.

Please help the orangutan by making a donation today!