Everyone loves a good laugh once every few days. However, in our busy lives, it has become so rare that we actually find time to talk or laugh whole-heartedly. Some thing even better is to get to see an honest positive reaction to some action of yours and here, this lovely furry friend of ours provided us both; something to share a laugh about and an honest reaction.
In the video, a man played a magic trick with the orangutan. He put a cherry in a cup and showed it to the orangutan. He then proceeded to shake the cup and pretend as though he was doing some sort of special technique to make the cherry disappear. The orangutan watched mesmerized as the man did this, very quickly turning the cup upside down to drop the cherry on the ground, and placed the lid back. He then opened the cup to show it was empty to the orangutan who stayed surprised for a few seconds and then guffawed loudly! He rolled over laughing, as the performer and others in the crowd laughed delightedly at this honest reaction! The guy quickly put the cherry back in the cup. The orangutan sat up and saw happily that the cherry was back.
This video became so famous because it is seldom that animals give us such human reactions as this orangutan did. Think about how our pets would have reacted. Cats would have looked the other way, dogs might have wanted to play fetch and birds would not even care. This makes one realize if the orangutan actually understood what was going on. The answer is yes, he did.
Did you know that an orangutan’s level of intelligence is equivalent to that of a three and a half year old child? National Wildlife Federation reported this after numerous researches, and this level of intelligence is quite evident from this video. The orangutan watched with concentration at what the guy was showing him, he was the perfect audience, giving the proper attention that the man deserved as a performer and reacting in the best way possible and that too at correct timings. How often is it that we ourselves give proper attention to people, to anyone at all nowadays? It would have definitely made this man’s day having such a unique interaction with an animal.
Unfortunately for us, these clever friends of ours are in a grave danger of becoming extinct. Since these are forest dwelling primates, their survival depends greatly on the fate on forests. Alas, we have been losing too many forests lately to various reasons which are all due to humans. For starters, urbanization is the main culprit as we need the land of these forests for building our factories and houses. Then of course we need the wood too for making paper, infrastructure etc. and thus logging becomes another reason. This has led to deforestation and stripped these primates of their habitat, making them endangered species. They are also being killed illegally for their hides, and the mother orangutan are often killed to take the baby orangutans away as their trade as exotic pets is flourishing. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the habitat of orangutans has been decreased by about 80% within the last 20 years! This is a staggering amount of habitat that has been lost and not compensated for these animals at all!
Taking a step forward to help protect these intelligent creatures is the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI). They have been working since 1971; starting from Indonesia they have been trying to help these animals out of their plight. Finally establishing as OFI in 1986, it has been involved in both; trying to help conserve these species and research on them to help save them, thus their work is multidimensional in helping these orangutans.
OFI is basically working in the tropical rain forests of Borneo and northern Sumatra which is the Orangutans’ natural habitat. Hence OFI is actively involved in these forests’ conservation and maintenance too. Here they work towards protecting, conserving and understanding the orangutans. They have about 6 programs going on which include Recuse, Rehabilitation and Release, Forest Protection, Community Programs, Research, GIS mapping and Rusti the orangutan.
Through the Forest Protection program, OFI has eliminated illegal logging, swamps and deforestation because of Palm Oil Plantation in the Tanjung Puting, National Park. With GIS Mapping, OFI surveys and marks the orangutans’ natural habitat to help protect their local areas. Their research program has even become the largest studies being carried out on any wild animal in the entire world!
OFI also runs the Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine (OCCQ) where they help manage 330 ex-captive orangutans who are in need of medical care and attention. They also run the Lamanday Wildlife Reserve through which they return these ex-captive, rehabilitated wild born orangutans into the wild once they have recovered completely.
Apart from this, OFI is also taking care of the further conservation by organizing educational sessions regarding orangutans as part of their Community program. They educate public, school children and the governments about orangutans, tropical rainforest and the problems these orangutans face.
They have a target of gathering $150,000 for the Borneo fires by the end of 2015, of which only $31,138 have been collected. Looking at how much they have achieved and how far they palm to take OFI, it is not an act of charity to help them but the humanitarian thing to do. Donate generously please to help them in this noble task to save these intelligent cousins of ours. Here is to hoping we continue to have this great audience always to guffaw at all our magic tricks!
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