The Orangutan's Diet - Essay Example

The Orangutans Diet The Orangutans Diet The Orangutan are primates that have been d to feed in over 400 food items. Therefore, understanding the dietary component these nutcrackers primates is a crucial topic to researchers. Interestingly, Orangutans are known to be frugivorous hence primarily feed in fruits. However, they are choosy and hence would feed in insects like termites, ants, pupae and crickets all day as they emerge. However, they will avoid starvation by feeding on leaves and barks of the plants. Therefore, the chief dietary component of the nutcrackers primates is fruits that take almost 50-60% followed by young leaves at 25%, 10% barks and flowers as well as 5% insects. Introduction Orangutans are known to be solitary but occasionally aggregation form particularly in enormous large fruiting fig trees. The individual Orangutans tend to compete as the scramble for food. Therefore, the paper will partly study the kind and strength of food competition in huge fig trees amongst the Orangutans and also probe the impacts of fruits seasonality on the changes in diets and energy balance amongst these wild Sumatran Orangutans to help understand the diet of Orangutans. Studies have shown that over 50 percent of Orangutans diet is composed of fruits hence earmarked as frugivorous. Also, their diet is composed of young leaves approximated to be about 25%, as well as barks and flowers rated at 10%. Moreover, Orangutans diets have also been uncovered to contain about 5% of insect primarily ants, pupae, crickets, and termites. The studies have also pointed out the wild Orangutans are selective and opportunistic. Therefore, during the emergence of tasty and nutritious insects, Orangutans feed all day on them (Nellemann, United Nations Environment Programme & GRID—Arendal, 2007, 34). In case of unavailability of fruits and insects, previous studies have observed that Orangutans feed on trees barks and leaves that are less in nutrition to avoid starvation. Moreover, wild Orangutans have been noted to learn to feed on hundreds of various food types as youngsters through observing their mothers while being permitted to take foods from the mouth and hands of their respective mothers. Purpose This study seeks to investigate and understand the Orangutans’ diet. The study will help the researcher to understand precisely what constitutes these primates diet. Moreover, the study will add knowledge to the already knowledge about these primates. Further, the study will help the researcher develop insights into changes in Orangutan caloric intake, energy balance, and ketones in response to the ever changing fruit availability. Also, the study will be significance as it will help uncover food competition between wild Orangutans and large fig trees. Ultimately the research will be of great importance as it presents an essential opportunity to understand the clear composition of Orangutans diet. Background A varied number of research have been executed to fathom the true position and composition of the Orangutans’ diet. The studies have looked at the Orangutans as frugivorous besides feeding on barks, insects, and leaves. The studies have rated wild Orangutans as choosy as well as opportunistic and would prefer to feed all day in nutritious insects during their emergence and also avoid starvation by eating low nutritious barks and leaves during the extinction of fruits and tasty insects. Termite, pupae, ants and crickets have been discovered as the primary insects that add to these frugivorous primates. Other studies have also focused on the competition amongst Orangutans for food in the fig trees and the effects of unavailability of fruits to the composition of the Orangutans’ diet. The current studies have noted that about 50 to 60 percent of the Orangutans’ diet is composed of fruits. The studies have also noted that Orangutans travel furthest and fast as they require in search for their foods of preference within their home ranges. The studies noted that despite fruits being Orangutans chief diet, they eat over 400 different foods. The Orangutans spend most of their team foraging for food except when they are sleeping or resting during the day. The study attaches their high caloric requirement as well as unavailability of higher quality foods to the enormous foraging for food all day. The studies have also studied the exact category of primates Orangutans belong and subsequently discovered Nutcracker Primates as the cohort for Orangutans. The Nutcracker Primates do crack open hard-coated fruits for their foods. Also, studies have also focused on studying the intelligence of Orangutans and accordingly uncovered that these nut cracking primates demonstrate their intelligence by utilizing leaves of the trees as gloves as they handle fruits engulfed in sharp points. Further, the sap, honey, seeds, fungus, soils, and eggs have been revealed as some of the Orangutans popular food products. Accordingly, studies have also ranked invertebrates, termites, and the pith of plants, nuts and shoots to form greater components of the Orangutans’ diet. Others researchers have also identified small mammals, ants, bamboo, stems, barks and flowers as inevitable food items for the diet of the Nutcracker primates. Other studies have also focused their studies on Orangutans’ diet by narrowing it down to assessing the relative changes in the fruits availability through monitoring over 558 Orangutans fruit trees to understand their caloric intake. The studies noted that Orangutans diet varied with the fluctuation of fruits availability. The study also noted that Orangutans fed on a number of flowers when they are prevalent. Moreover, the study observed that Orangutans greatly feed on seeds, entire fruits, and pulp as the fruits hit maturity. During the end of mast fruiting and the beginning of severe fruits extinction, Orangutans were noted to shift to barks, leaves and insects as their chief dietary component (High Altitude Primates, 2014, 45). With respect to Caloric Intake, current studies show that fruits were available in their diet during the mast with the mast foods being significantly higher in caloric content relative to non-mast foods. On other hand, studies circumventing energy balance amongst the Orangutans have also been executed. The urinalysis of the Orangutans demonstrated that ketones were present solely at the period of severe fruit shortages. Moreover, ketones were unavailable from the Orangutans urine at the mast periods. The current study will add to the presently available literature about the dietary of Orangutan. Significance of the study The study help uncovers the unmeasured Orangutan nutritional requirement. The previous studies have failed to directly measure this nutritional requirement of Orangutan and have thus relied on rough estimates that are reached at by the application of standard tables utilized in calculating human energy requirement based on the body weight and levels of activity. The current study thus comes in time as the study of Orangutan diets is on the increase. In addition, it is hard to understand the true dietary composition of the Orangutans as they are understood to be feeding in over 400 food items depending on the period of the year, particularly determined by mast fruiting. Objectives The primary goal of this study is to provide an extensive and clear understanding of the Orangutans dietary. The researcher’s aims to accomplish this objective by undertaking a thorough investigating into the foods that Orangutan feeds on as earlier noted to be over 400 food items. Therefore, the researchers seek to understand the energy balance and caloric intake amongst the Nutcracker primates to understand the topic princely. Further, the investigation will focus on other food items apart from the fruits that are rated the primary food for the Orangutans. The study of other food items such as insects, barks, leaves will help the researcher add to the knowledge as some studies have only looked at Orangutans as Frugivorous. Available Knowledge The current study is investigating about the dietary of the Nutcracker primates. The current knowledge about these primates is that they primarily feed on fruits and are hence called frugivorous. However, the in-depth investigation reveals that the nutcracker primates feed on over 400 food items amongst them insects, bark, leaves. The insects primarily include crickets, pupae, ants, and termites. Further, the investigation discovers that Orangutans are choosy and selective and would feed on nutritious and tasty insects all day except when they are resting and sleeping so longs the insects are available (Brockman, & Primate Seasonality Symposium. 2005, 56). Accordingly, the current literatures show that Orangutans will resort to less nutritious barks and leaves to averse starvation during the end of mast fruiting once they have finished eating the seeds, entire fruits, and pulps. Accordingly, this knowledge is the stepping stones upon which the current study is rested. The prior insights into understanding the Nutcracker Orangutans is important as the researcher will only focus on areas of the academic gaps such as the failure by previous to directly measure the nutritional requirement of this group of primates. Therefore, the present research will precisely help me study about the nutritional requirement of these Orangutans to add to the current knowledge about their dietary composition. Conclusion The study design will be a mixture of both exploratory qualitative and quantitative research. The data will be collected by applying both primary and secondary data collection methods. The secondary data will be obtained by both reviewing the available literature on the topic and cross-reference to the list of sources listed in these articles. The primary data collection will mainly entail observation of the feeding characteristics of these primates in a number of parks. The observation will be conducted for a period of nine months to ascertain the impacts of fluctuation of fruits to the dietary of Orangutans (Beck et. al. 2001, 76). Through mast fruiting and towards its end, the researcher will observe the changes that happen in large fig trees selected. The observation will focus on changes in flowers, fruits, leaves, seeds, and pulps. In addition, the changes in the number of insects in the fig trees will be observed with respects to termites, ants, crickets, and pupae. The recommendation will be made for future and further studies in case the time frame will not help me complete the study. Reference Beck, Benjamin B., et. al. (2001). Great apes and humans. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C., USA and London, England. Brockman, D. K., & Primate Seasonality Symposium. (2005). Seasonality in primates: Studies of living and extinct human and non-human primates. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press. High Altitude Primates. (2014). New York, NY: Springer New York. Nellemann, C., United Nations Environment Programme., & GRID--Arendal. (2007). The last stand of the orangutan: State of emergency : illegal logging, fire and palm oil in Indonesias national parks. Arendal, Norway: United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal. Read More