Orangutan Observation - Assignment Example

Orangutan Observation The primate I observed was a Sumatran orangutan. This specie of the primates usually lives in tropical and swamp forests on the Southeast Asian island of Sumatra. When I came up to the cage the orangutan was living in, she was sitting on the stony floor organizing her personal stuff. The orangutan was a female; her height was around 45 inches (although it was difficult to estimate her height by sight I checked the information on the zoo website). She had long brownish wool which was tided and brushed by the workers of the zoo that were looking after the orangutans’ cage. The orangutan had a massive bodily structure and very developed muscles that helped her to move very fast and climb on trees in wild nature or swing on the artificially constructed beams located in the open-air-cage. The hind limbs are short and the front limbs, on the contrary, are very long and even reach to the ankles. Such long front limbs help the orangutan to clamber up on the beams and robes in her cage. She didn’t take food from the zoo visitors but the other orangutans that lived in the cage did; although her front limbs were long and thin enough to fit between the bars and reach people; furthermore, she could have played with people with her long hands. Her hair was sparse, reddish-brown; the hair on the shoulders was longer. Toes could turn and were opposed to other fingers, which was considered as an adaptation for climbing trees. The orangutan was an old female, probably, the oldest in that zoo. She didn’t live alone in the open-air-cage but together with her family which consisted of her two children (young male and female orangutans). The routine of the orangutan didn’t have much activity because she moved rather slowly and the majority of time she was busy with some static activities. For instance, first she was trying to untangle some tree branches that were lying on the floor. She was so busy with the activity that it took around 40 minutes for her to systematize the branches and put them in some special place in the cage. This activity was one of many activities that she was doing during her morning ritual of cleaning. Probably, it looked like she was cleaning the territory because it was very alike to what people do when they clean their houses or yards. I noticed that despite she was moving rather slowly she was very focused on all of those activities and didn’t get disturbed on everything that was going on outside the cage; she was ignoring children’s calling her and all the loud noise outside the cage bars. After she cleaned the territory she started eating her meal that consisted of some fruits and fresh water. At the zoo, the orangutans are offered cabbage, romaine lettuce, kale, carrots, yams, broccoli, bananas, apples, oranges, and grapes. She was eating slowly and turned her body towards the wall so that nobody could disturb her eating process. When people were calling her by name she wouldn’t respond to them and totally ignored the noise, but when she finished her lunch she seemed like started noticing people around like the world hadn’t existed for her before she finished her meal. Such behavior was not unusual for the orangutan, as I noticed later. In general her behavior was rather alienated and she rarely noticed people who were observing her behind the bars. She was very solitary and almost didn’t spend time with anyone. After having a meal the orangutan was doing her daily activities. She climbed on the artificial constructions made of some rope webs and hammocks. Then she lied in the hammock under a tree and fell asleep for a while until some loud voice woke her up and she became very angry. She rapidly stood up and started moving very fast searching for the source of the voice that had awakened her. In some time the orangutan probably forgot about the reason of her madness and calmed down. She lied back to the hammock and started resting again. In half an hour she woke up again and climbed down from the hammock in order to join the company of the other primates that lived in the same open-air-cage. They got together and started climbing the ropes that were located above the territory of the cage. They didn’t seem like having fun together but more like they were climbing separately from each other, because they didn’t gather during the activity and almost didn’t interact with each other. The conduct of the orangutans in the same open-air-cage was rather strange because they acted more like they were co-existing with each other but not like they were a community, a family, because almost all their activities were done separately and with almost no interaction and actions directed to each other. The orangutan was very calm and slow; most time of the day she spent sleeping under the trees or climbing the ropes. However, the activities that the orangutan had, apart from daydreaming and climbing, like organization of her personal stuff within the territory looked like everything she did was very well-targeted and she knew what she was doing. For instance, when she started putting some big leafs that had fallen from the trees one on another, she was very concentrated and picked them by size. She organized fresh leafs separately from the dry ones. Then she took the dry leafs and spread them all around the territory where she and other orangutans were usually sleeping, in the shade of a big tree. She put the fresh leafs on the sunny territory of the cage in order to make them dry so that the other day she could spread them into the lying zone. I didn’t understand why exactly she was doing this until I saw a worker of the zoo that looked after the cage with orangutans. The women came into the cage in order to clean the territory and she started doing what the orangutan was doing in the morning, organizing staff in the cage. Hence, it turned out that the orangutan was imitating the action of those people who were working in the zoo and she was copying her conduct. Also, there was a small artificial water hole in the cage, and orangutans had some personal stuff that they cleaned in the pond. I realized that they were taught to do so because they saw people doing it and they started copying that actions even though they didn’t know what they were doing it for. In fact almost all the actions that the orangutan was doing looked very reasonable and seemed rational because they were very similar to human conduct, as she was precise in her copying of human behavior. As for communication, despite the primates didn’t spend much time together, they had some activities that they were doing simultaneously like they were eating together and were climbing ropes at the same time. Their communication was rare and mostly included some gestures and facial expressions. For instance, it was very obvious when the orangutan was mad at the loud noise that woke her up. She started showing ivories and stood up on her legs becoming rather tall. When she was communicating with other orangutans her face demonstrated joy and happiness as she looked like smiling and was very calm. A very interesting thing was that the orangutans didn’t use any sounds to communicate, which is not very typical for primates. These orangutans were extremely silent and used only gestures during their interactions. The most exciting thing about these primates and their communication was that their facial expression and gestures were so alike to humans’ that it seemed like they were no different from us. They were passing food to each other and had perfectly harmonious relationships. Also, they were observing each other’s actions and even tried to copy each other, which was the reason why they tend to do the same activities simultaneously. The orangutan I was observing was the least active of all of them because she was quite old and probably a bit lazy to get involved into some energy-consuming activities. She spent much of the time sleeping in the hammock and eating; furthermore, she ignored the people outside the cage like she didn’t want to acknowledge their existence, as she didn’t even look at them when they were calling her by name. Perhaps, she was pretty tired of the constant attention and had learned how to ignore it. The primates are very alike to humans; especially it concerns their conduct and emotional expressions. It is very easy to understand orangutans’ feelings and emotions because their facial expressions are very alike to humans’. Also, as it was obvious from the activities the primate was doing while she was cleaning the territory of her cage, orangutans are very good in imitation of human behavior and repeat all human actions down to the smallest detail. Moreover, her eyes seem like the eyes of a wise person and the facial expressions of the old orangutan that I was observing were so much alike to the facial expressions of old people. Read More