Word: orangutans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...August, Dutton will publish "The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity" by TIME contributor Eugene Linden...
...HALL, 77, archaeologist and leading archaeometrist who famously uncovered the Piltdown Man hoax; in Oxford, England. Using X-ray fluorescence, Hall showed that the Piltdown Man's skeleton--once thought to be evolution's "missing link"--had been stained to look fossilized and that the teeth of an orangutan had been filed to appear more human...
...Nobody knows this better than the six young women who are surrogate mothers to orangutan babies brought in for rehabilitation at the Balikpapan Orangutan Foundation on the west coast of Borneo. The orangutans, most of whom have been confiscated from illegal wildlife traders, some of them as far afield as Japan and Taiwan, are often in a state of shock, having just seen their mothers killed by poachers. "There's no difference between human babies and the orangutans," says Wiwiek, an open-faced 24-year-old surrogate mother dressed in her working clothes, a white jumpsuit and green rubber boots...
...these captive apes become intellectually dim cousins of their wild predecessors. "Orangutans are naturally the most intelligent of the great apes," says Willie Smits, a Dutch forester turned orangutan advocate. "They're so close to us, we can learn a huge amount about our own physiology, psychology and early origins." Smits talks enthusiastically of Van Schaik's research. The "spark" that enabled Van Schaik's particular group to use tools was a much higher level of sociability?sharing food, helping one another in tasks such as food collection?than is usual for orangutans. That in turn speaks volumes about...
...voluble Smits, a former high school wrestler, ticks off a list of new findings just beginning to reveal what we will lose if wild orangutans become extinct. Often dubbed the world's best field botanists, orangutans are also talented pharmacists, treating their illnesses with forest plants. Because of their similarity to humans, the benefits are obvious. Plagued by a splitting headache while walking in the forest, Smits remembered seeing a slumped female orangutan clutching her head and groaning, only to make what seemed to be a complete recovery after eating some flowers from a nearby bush. "I immediately went...