Ahh, nice hotel last night. Best Western, a real Best Western! Nice to shower in hot water, shave, and actually flush the paper down the toilet! (Those of you who travel internationally, know what I mean).
The Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Center is one-of-a-kind. There are only 30,000 Oran Utans remaining. Only in Borneo and Sumatra. This center collects orphaned Orang babies, and spends years rehabilitating them to be reintroduced into the wild. We share 96% of our DNA with Orangs, and they, like us, our slow learners! Since they have no natural mother, they have to be taught everything Orang Utans need to know to survive in the wild. We were allowed to observe the outdoor feeding that happens twice a day. These Orangs live in the surrounding area and still come in for guaranteed breakfast and dinner. As you can see from the photos, the Gibbon monkeys know where the easy meal is too.
About 9:45 the Gibbon monkeys show up, then slowly the Orangs. These are 3-6 years old, live in the jungle, but not ready to be re-introduced into other parts of Borneo. They have learned to live and move about in the jungle, but haven’t developed the independence needed to survive. Others, their age are already independent, but they, like humans each have a different level of confidence as they experience new things. The feeder comes out and slowly leaves food for them. No interaction at this point in their rehab. Initially, when they are infants, they actually treat them just like human newborns; bottle feeding, bathing and clothing them(to keep them warm). Indeed the staff takes the babies home at night to care form them.
The big surprise of the day was the emergence of a big Alpha male. He is a wild Orang, was not in rehab and rarely shows up at the feeding. A huge treat for all of us. When he showed up, the feeder immediately left the feeding platform. He behaved himself, grabbing breakfast quite calmly then sauntering off.
The second surprise of the morning was to find two orangs on our walkway out of the viewing area. They wandered on the walkway as we were walking by. We were instructed not to touch them and no flash photography. Timing was perfect with one of them sitting right in front of us. Couldn’t resist having Gloria pose next to him!
After our Orang Utan Encounter it is off to the Nature Lodge where we will spend 3 days, 2 nights getting to know the tropical rain forest, early in the morning, during the day, and late at night.
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