World Orangutan Day 2017: 5 Cool Facts About Endangered Red Ape

World Orangutan Day on Saturday, Aug. 19, calls attention to the plight of one of the world’s smartest species. They often get a bum rap in that area because they have been mercilessly exploited by people who make money trying to convince you orangutans are are dumb and slow. (That is so wrong, and we’ll get to that in a moment.)

Orangutans are disappearing as fast as palm oil plantations are going up in Indonesia. You may not care, but you should, and here’s why: If orangutans, the largest of the world’s arboreal species, don’t survive, neither will other animal and plant species in the fragile rain forests of the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only places on Earth where orangutans are found in the wild.

A keystone species, orangutans disperse fruit seeds other species in the ecosystem depend on for survival. If they go extinct, the ecosystem would change dramatically — not that humans haven’t already done that with their appetite for products with palm oil and Asian hardwoods. So, if you want to help orangutans survive in the wild, stop that.

Orangutans spend most of their time in trees — their name literally translates to “man of the forest” — and as their homes have literally disappeared beneath them to make room for oil palm plantations, both are critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

There are two species of the red ape — Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) and Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) — and together there are probably only about 50,000 to 65,00 left, though the population could be much lower as rain forest canopy continues to disappear. About 2,000 to 3,000 orangutans are killed every year, according to the Orangutan Conservancy, so do the math. At this rate, the Orangutan Conservancy says, they could be extinct in less than 50 years.

Orangutans are a lot like us, sharing about 97 percent identical DNA. But those aren’t the only similarities. Here are five cool things to know about orangutans:

1. Orangutans can whistle. Bonnie, an orangutan at the National Zoo, suddenly started whistling in the 1980s. Scientists determined that Bonnie began whistling – a sound that is in a human’s, but not an orangutan’s, repertoire – after hearing an animal caretaker make the sound.

The significance, great ape experts say, is that Bonnie’s spontaneous whistling indicates that animals can independently pick up sounds from other species.

“This is important because it provides a mechanism to explain documented between-population variation in sounds for wild orangutans,” Serge Wich, the lead author of the study on Bonnie’s whistling, said. “In addition, it counters a long-held assumption that non-human primates have fairly fixed sound repertoires that are not under voluntary control. Being able to learn new sounds and use these voluntarily are also two important aspects of human speech and these findings open up new avenues to study certain aspects of human speech evolution in our closest relatives.”

2. Orangutans are ticklish. Many species of animals respond to gentle tickling, but only humans and great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, as well as orangutans) actually laugh, exhibiting what’s called gargalesis, which is thought to have evolved as a means of social bonding.

Noted Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal told LiveScience that laughter during tickling is probably the most humanlike behavior exhibited by great apes. “It is low-pitched compared to human laughter,” he said, “but the facial expressions and the waxing and waning of the laughing sounds are eerily human to the point that those of us familiar with these vocalizations cannot stop ourselves from laughing, too.”

3. Orangutans are amazing mothers — the original helicopter parent. In the wild, babies cling to their mothers for the first five or so years of their lives, and may nurse until they are 8. As they travel through the forest together, mom teaches her offspring how to forage for food, how to eat food, how to make their nests and other survival skills. Offspring start to venture out on their own when they’re about 10, but females may return to their mothers’ nests until they’re 15 or 16

Such enduring relationships — the most intense among non-human mammals — are rare in the animal kingdom, but primatologists say orangutans have long childhoods because there’s so much for them to learn.

4. Orangutans are skilled tool users. Tool use was long thought to be a uniquely human behavior, but in the wild, orangutans have been observed using branches as they forage for food, leaves to modify their calls and sticks to measure the depth of water. They smartly use use sticks to extract seeds from one of their favorite fruits, puwin, which is covered on the outside with needle-like hairs, and this clever innovation on their part means they never have to touch the shards. Orangutans have also been observed braiding vines together to make a thicker rope.

5. Orangutans are orange, but researchers don’t really know why. Their hair blazes in the sunlight, but when orangutans retreat to the shade, only the dark skin beneath the hair shows — as if they’ve taken off a brilliant wrap. There are some theories — for example, naturally solitary orangutans may be able to signal to others of their species that they’re in the same neck of the forest — but it’s just that, a theory.

(Patch’s Beth Dalbey is unapologetically biased about orangutans and other great apes after having spent three years writing about them for a scientific research center involved in non-invasive language and intelligence studies with orangutans and bonobos.)

Jens Meyer/AP photo